LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 



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UNITED STATES OF "AMERICA. 



THE ATHENy£UM PRESS SERIES 

G. L. KITTREDGE AND C. T. WINCHESTER 
GENERAL EDITORS 



Btbena?um press Series* 

This series is intended to furnish a 
library of the best English literature 
from Chaucer to the present time in a 
form adapted to the needs of both the 
student and the general reader. The 
works selected are carefully edited, with 
biographical and critical introductions, 
full explanatory notes, and other neces- 
sary apparatus. 




ROBERT HERRICK. 



HtbenKum press Series 



SELECTIONS 

FROM THE POETRY OF 

ROBERT HERRICK 



EDITED BY 



EDWARD EVERETT HALE, Jr., Ph.D. (Halle) 

Professor of English in the State University of Iowa 









"IN 12 1895 ) 




&J 




!^,SH'^/ 




zq/t/i ^^ 


BOSTON, U.S.A. 




GINN & COMPANY, PUBLISHERS 


1 8 95 





Copyright, 1895, BY 
EDWARD EVERETT HALE, Jr. 



ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 



/ 







PREFACE. 



This volume of selections is meant as well for those 
readers who are content to enjoy Herrick's poetry as for 
those who desire to study a little the things which they 
have enjoyed. With such a double object there have 
been certain difficulties ; some things which are interest- 
ing to the student are very dry to the lover of poetry, 
and something might be said on the other side as well. 
Some concessions have to be made to each necessity. I 
have tried to give all Herrick's best poems ; but I have 
also, by including some that are by no means his best, 
aimed at giving an idea of his work that would be fairly 
accurate as well as pleasing. I have not thought it 
necessary to preserve the original and often erroneous 
spelling and punctuation ; but it has seemed well to 
follow it where it really tells us something about the 
pronunciation, whether for the sake of the metre or for 
other reasons. I have tried to point out some of the 
things which are delightful in Herrick's poetry ; but I 
have not shunned the discussion of several matters which 
may seem aridly scholastic. I have also omitted a few 
lines here and there, as is indicated by the numbering. 



viii PREFACE. 

I have been aided by the studies of several of my pre- 
decessors who are mentioned in the Bibliography, and 
must especially acknowledge the help I have had from 
the work of Dr. Grosart and Mr. Pollard. Their editions 
are referred to so often that I have used merely the ini- 
tials G. and P. I may also remark here that the abbre- 
viation Diss, refers to the Dissertation mentioned on 
p. lxx, and that poems are referred to by the number in 
Mr. Pollard's edition. 

Lastly, I am glad to mention the kindness of my col- 
league Professor A. N. Currier, who has always been 
ready to aid my recollections of the Latin poets whom 
Herrick admired so much, and, most particularly, that of 
Professor G. L. Kittredge, who has helped me with many 
a reference not only to the Latin but to English poets as 
well, and whose suggestions throughout have been of the 
greatest value. 

State University of Iowa, 
April 4th, 1895. 



CONTENTS. 



Page 

Introduction xi 

I. On the Life of Herrick xi 

II. The Hesperides xviii 

III. The Noble Numbers xlvi 

IV. Chronological Evidence of Herrick's Poems . xlviii 
V. Versification and Vocabulary .... lv 

VI. Herrick the Poet lxiii 

VII. Bibliography lxv 

Selections from the Poetry of Herrick i 

From the Hesperides 3 

His Farewell unto Poetry 133 

From the Noble Numbers 137 

Notes 157 

Glossary 185 

Index to First Lines . 193 



INTRODUCTION. 



I. ON THE LIFE OF HERRICK. 

Almost all editors are zealous to give us a Life of their 
author, — to tell when he was born, what he did, how he 
lived, and when he died. About a poet these are among 
the least necessary things to know, and more especially 
about a lyric poet. What we really want to know is what 
kind of man he was and what kind of poetry he wrote. 
In so far as his birth, and parentage, and education, and 
friendships, and occupations, and so forth, — in so far as 
facts about these things help us to know him and his 
poetry, they are good. Otherwise they are matters of 
minor curiosity. We may, therefore, be thankful that 
concerning Herrick we know a little as to these matters, 
and only a little. We know enough on the main points, 
and not too much concerning the trivialities; we know so 
little that we must depend chiefly on his work, and so 
much that we can on the whole apprehend his work very 
well. 

What little there is to say of Herrick's life without in- 
voking the aid of his poetry, though not very interesting, 
does at least give us the main facts. His various editors 
have been somewhat successful in finding the names of 
his parents, his brothers and sisters, of his uncles and 
aunts, and of a good many friends and connections. They 
have fixed, too, the main events of his life down to the 
year 1648, after which we are sadly in the dark. But it 
cannot be said that the chronicle offers many remarkable 



xii INTR OB UC TION. 

circumstances. It is hard to make it much more than 
a list of names and dates. It is not until we get to his 
poetry that Herrick becomes a real man. Such as it is, 
however, the narrative runs thus: — 

Nicholas Herrick, of Leicester, the son of John (who 
spelled his name Eyrick), sometime mayor of that city, 
came to London a dozen years or so before William 
Shakespeare, and there became a goldsmith. There, too, 
he married. His wife was apparently of good family, and 
had at any rate connections of position in the city. Mar- 
ried in 1582, they had seven 1 children, the eldest born 
three years after the marriage, the youngest only fifteen 
months before the death of his father. This youngest 
born was Robert Herrick, and his birthday was August 
24, 1 59 1. Little more than a year afterward Nicholas 
Herrick was killed by a fall from a high window. What- 
ever may have been the real cause, there was suspicion that 
the death was a suicide, on which account a good sum 
had to be paid to the High Almoner to buy off the legal 
claim that thus existed upon all that was left behind. As 
it was, however, the widow was left in what seem fairly 
comfortable circumstances. The estate was about ^5000, 
or, as money was worth then, something like $125,000 of 
American money of the present day. Nicholas Herrick's 
brothers were made guardians of the children and man- 
agers of their share of the property. William Herrick, 
who became subsequently Sir William, was, like Nicholas, 
a goldsmith, and to him in course of time was Robert ap- 
prenticed for ten years. He probably had some school- 
ing, but what it was cannot be said. Dr. Grosart thinks 
he may have gone to Westminster. 

What sort of prentice the future poet made we do not 
know. We do know, however, that in 16 14, some years 

1 Tradition adds an eighth, said to be younger than Robert. 



IN TROD UC TION. xi i i 

before his time was up, he desired to stop being a pren- 
tice and go to the University. His uncle seems to have 
made no opposition, and he entered as Fellow Commoner 
at St. John's College, Cambridge, being at that time 
twenty-one years of age. 

As to Herrick's university life we are not left wholly 
in the dark, for to this period belong the only products of 
his pen preserved to us besides his poems. There are a 
number of charming letters from the future poet (proba- 
bly more or less of a poet then, too) addressed to his 
uncle and guardian. They are all of one tenor ; they all 
sound a note that one can easily imagine in the letters of 
a student to his guardian. Herrick was not without hu- 
mor in his university days. " Before you unsealed my 
letter (right worshipful) it cannot be doubted but you had 
perfect knowledge of the essence of my writing before 
you read it ; for custom hath made you expert in my plain- 
song (mitte pecuniam), that being the cause sine qua non, 
or the power that gives life and being to each nfatter." 
Sometimes Herrick asks for his usual allowance, some- 
times he hopes that an advance can be made him, some- 
times he seems to hope there will be a bit over and above 
the £/^o a year that was apparently the sum to which, 
like Goldsmith's Pastor, he found himself entitled. In 
spite of money's being worth more in Herrick's time than 
nowadays, in spite of Herrick's having only himself to 
care for, he seems never to have felt comfortably off. At 
any rate, he moved in a year or so over to Trinity Hall, 
where the expenses were less than at St. John's, and 
there, in 1617, he took his Bachelor's degree, and three 
years later his Master's. In 1620 he returned to London. 

What Herrick did in London and how he supported 
himself cannot now be said with any accuracy. There is 
no doubt, however, that, whatever else he did, he began 



xiv INTRODUCTION. 

now to become known as a poet. At this time Ben Jon- 
son was a sort of Dictator in the Republic of Letters, and 
it is evident from references in the Hesperides that Her- 
rick made one of the group of younger poets who gathered 
round the great man, received rules from him at the Devil 
Tavern, and, to speak technically, were " sealed of the 
tribe of Ben." Other friends of Herrick we hear of, but 
not so many as to give us any clear notion of his life. Mr. 
Hazlitt thinks that he had some place in the Chapel 
Royal, and the conjecture is by no means unlikely. 

Whether or no he held any such position, he seems to 
have had at this time or later some connection with dis- 
tinguished persons at Court, especially with Endymion 
Porter, groom of the bedchamber under Charles I. Por- 
ter was a patron of literature and the arts, and Herrick 
always alludes to him as to his Maecenas. Other patrons, 
too, Herrick seems to have had ; for at that time men of 
letters depended for support, not as to-day upon the fancy 
of th£ public, but upon the liberality of wealthy men. 
But since we cannot be sure, as will appear later, what 
poems Herrick wrote at just this period, and since outside 
evidence is lacking, we cannot form any very definite no- 
tion of this time of his life. 

At court and at the tavern Herrick passed some of his 
time in London, and probably did very many interesting 
things there and elsewhere of which we now shall never 
know. But he seems to have sought an independence, 
and to have turned to the church. When he was ordained 
is not known, but in 1627 he was appointed chaplain to 
the fruitless expedition to the Isle of Re, and in 1629 
he was named to the vicarage of Dean Prior in Devon- 
shire. 1 

1 Dean Prior lies between Plymouth and Exeter, nearer the for- 
mer, and some little distance to the south of Dartmoor Forest. 



INTRODUCTION. xv 

We might almost say that here Herrick's life begins. 
For nineteen years he was Vicar of Dean Prior, and in 
those nineteen years he wrote many of his poems, col- 
lected and corrected others, and at the end of that period 
published the book which has made him immortal. Of 
the book we shall speak later ; here we may content our- 
selves with saying that for his Devonshire life it is almost 
our only authority. It is certainly sufficient authority for 
practical purposes. It is true that it is only with the 
greatest difficulty that we can screw out any definite facts, 1 
but it must always be remembered that definite facts are 
not the things we want most in the case of a poet. We know 
that Herrick lived at his vicarage for nineteen years on a 
stipend of ,£50 (equal to about $1250 of the present day), 
and that in 1648 he was dispossessed for Royalist opin- 
ions. We know that he had a housekeeper named Pru- 
dence Baldwin, a spaniel named Tracy, and a sparrow 
named Phil, and, according to tradition, a pig which he 
taught to drink from a silver tankard, as a type perhaps 
of his consideration of his parishioners. Further (again 
following tradition), we know that he sometimes became 
disgusted with his Devonshire life, flung his sermons in 
the faces of his congregation, and went home to write 
rather nasty epigrams upon them to vent his wrath. We 
know, too, of a number of his friends, — Endymion Porter 
as before, Sir Clipsby Crewe, Sir Edward Giles, of Dean 
Court near by, and others, many of them persons of con- 
sideration in their day. 

But certainly such material as we have here is of far 
less interest than that afforded us by even a few of his 
poems. His Winding Sheet (517) and A Thanksgiving to 
God for His House {N.N. 47) give us more that we really 

1 With what difficulty, the writer's Dissertation, spoken of later 
(p. lxx), bears emphatic witness.. 



xvi INTRODUCTION. 

want than any number of names and dates. A New 
Year's Gift sent to Sir Simeon Steward (319) or The Hock- 
Cart (250) reconcile us easily to a very plentiful lack of 
definite facts. 

Herrick lived in Devonshire, then, for nineteen years, 
at the end of which time, in 1648, he was dispossessed of 
his vicarage by the Puritans, and presumably returned to 
London. In London he must at first have busied him- 
self chiefly about publishing his poems ; the idea had 
been long in his mind, but never before had he been able 
to put it into effect. They were published in rather a 
thick and dumpy little quarto in the year 1648, and with 
the publication Herrick vanishes from us like a lamp ex- 
tinguished in darkness. A few rumors concerning the 
following years are preserved, but none seem worthy of 
restatement here. When the king came to his own again, 
Herrick also returned to what had been his own. He 
went back to Devonshire in 1662 as vicar of Dean Prior, 
where he died in 1674. 

Such, in rather compressed form, is the story of Her- 
rick's life, as far as outside sources give it to us. Some 
elaboration and conjecture could be added. Mr. Hazlitt, 
Dr. Grosart, and Mr. Pollard, in their editions, offer us a 
good deal more that is of interest about Herrick's family 
and friends and about Herrick's literary activity. But 
after all, the only thing that makes Herrick real to us is 
his Hesperides, and without that a hundred pages of detail 
concerning friends and manuscripts could not interest us 
in him. No one will desire to linger long over such mat- 
ters before proceeding to Herrick's poetry ; no one, ex- 
cept perhaps (to borrow Swinburne's excellent phrase) 
" the sturdy student who tackles his Herrick as a school- 
boy is expected to tackle his Horace " (P. I, xii), and even 



INTR OD UC TION. x vi i 

the sturdy student may not find it amiss to proceed at 
once ; his welfare is provided for in foot-notes, and his 
wits will not be allowed to rust. 

With the exception of a few poems found here and 
there, first collected by Hazlitt, 1 Herrick's work is all in- 
cluded in two collections, one of poetry entitled Hesperi- 
des, and the other of religious verse called Noble Num- 
bers. 2 The two were published in the same book, though 
the Noble Numbers has a separate title-page, which is dated 
1647, while the Hesperides title-page bears date 1648. A 
single glance at the book is enough to see that we have 
in it not only most delightful poetry, but a most delight- 
ful poet. Herrick takes at once a personal aspect. 

On this matter there is one difficulty, — a difficulty which 
would hardly be worthy of note in just this place 3 were it 
not that it has led several Herrick lovers somewhat astray. 
It lies in the fact that the poems of the Hespei'ides (there 
are more than eleven hundred of them) are printed in 
one .grand confusion, to which no one has as yet suc- 
ceeded in finding the clue. And the consequence is that 
in comparatively few cases can we affix a date to this 
poem or that. This matter, which seems at first a mere 
scholarly bother, is really of some importance ; for the 

1 They may be found in G. or P., and are as follows : The Descrip- 
tion of a Woman, His Daughter's Dowry, His Farewell unto Poetry, A 
Carol presented to Dr. Williams, His Mistress to hi?n at his Fare- 
well, Upon Parting, Upon Master Fletcher's Incomparable Plays, The 
New Charon, and the Fpitaph on the Tomb of Sir Edward Giles, — 
this last, by the way, first printed from the church at Dean Prior by 
Dr. Grosart. 

2 Speaking exactly, the name Hesperides is given on the title-page 
to The Works both Human and Divine (see p. lxvi), but it is more 
commonly confined to the secular poems. 

3 To the student it is of course important. I have thought it bet- 
ter to reserve any particular discussion of the matter until later 
(pp. xlviii-liv). 



xv iii INTR OD UC TION. 

poems of the Hesperides seem so inconsistent that, unless 
we can form some conception of different times of com- 
position, they present to us discordances which are really 
more ridiculous than serious, but which we should be glad 
to avoid. For the present it will be enough to bear this 
fact in mind, and with such caution to turn at once to a 
consideration of Herrick's poetry. 



II. THE HESPERIDES. 



ucn^pce 



Best loved,*UHK, if not best known of all Herrick's 
poems, are sucB^pcelebrate the old-time customs of the 
country year. They are the truest English pastorals that 
we have. Whether it be but an invitation to Anthea to 
the wake (76^ or some more formal praise of country 
life for Enchtjtfjln Porter (664), the atmosphere is always 
in harmoigB Bthe touch is always true. 1 

From ^HPiround again to Yule, the due celebration 
of the country calendar was dear to the poet, and we 
feel that we never touch his life more surely than when 

1 Perhaps absolute accuracy would compel us to make exceptions 
of the very few cases in these poems where Herrick gives way to the 
fashion of his time, and writes of "enamell'd meads" (664) or 
"damask'd meadows" (106). Such expressions are very rare in 
those poems of Herrick which seem inspired by the country. In 
577 there are a number and so in some other poems, but these 
poems have not the country atmosphere, and there are other rea- 
sons for supposing them to be earlier than Herrick's life in Devon- 
shire, v. p. Hi. As to the fashion itself, it was not uncommon in 
the days of Charles I., as one may see by reading Carew. We may 
even find examples in Milton's Arcades and Comus. Nowadays 
such artificial imagery generally strikes us as in false taste. Tenny- 
son's "slow dropping veils of thinnest lawn " in the Lohts Eaters, 
called forth some comment on this very ground. 



INTR OD UC TION. xix 

we read the verses thereby inspired. " Sweet Country 
life," he writes, 

" to such unknown 

Whose lives are others', not their own, 

But serving courts and cities, be 

Less happy, less enjoying thee." 

In this poem to Endymion Porter (664) thus so well 
begun, he compresses the cheerful round of times trans- 
shifting into a few lines. 

" For sports, for pageantry, a 
Thou hast thy eves and ho 
Thy wakes, thy quintels, her 
Thy Maypoles too with garlan 
Thy morris-dance, thy Whitsun 
Thy shearing-feast, which neve 
Thy harvest home, thy wassail 
That's toss'd up after fox-i'-th' 
Thy mummeries, thy Twelf-tide 
And queens, thy Christmas revelli 

These lines might almost serve us as aV Kterrick's 
country poems, for wake, quintel, and maypole, wassail 
bowl and harvest home, Christmas and Twelfthtide revel- 
lings, each called forth a special verse, and some more 
than one. The succession of Christmas holly, box at 
Candlemas, Easter yew and Whitsun birch, was sung by 
him. The horses of the hock-cart, decked with white 
linen and crowned with garlands of oak- leaves, were 
objects of his care. He sees to it that future ages shall 
understand the true ingredients of the wassail bowl, nor 
was he above immortalizing those potent charms which 

1 The best illustrations of these poems of Herrick's are to be 
found in Brand, Popular Antiquities (ed. Ellis., 3 vols., London, 
1846), often quoted in the Notes. Herrick did Brand good service 
in illustrating the country customs of England, and now the debt is 
well repaid by the wealth of illustration that Brand affords Herrick. 




X x INTRODUCTION. 

prevent the night-hag's entangling the horses' tails, or 
enable the maids the more easily to light the fire. 

In the longer eclogues there is sometimes a touch of 
Horace. 1 When he compares his brother's happy lot 
with that of the industrious merchant 

"who for to find 
Gold runneth to the Western Inde," 

we have a dim recollection of the Odes. 2 

But Herrick's love for the country went far deeper than 
mere elegant classicism. To Endymion Porter (664) he 

writes : 

"Yet thou dost know 
That the best compost for the lands 
Is the wise master's feet and hands." 

This is an old English proverb and rings as true as 

"The smell of morning's milk and cream " (375). 

Whoever will read Herrick's reminiscences of Mar- 
lowe's "Come live with me" (To Phillis, 523) will see 
how much more substantial were the delights offered by 
the later poet, — more substantial, and, we may add, more 
of them. 

English Pastorals may these poems be called, and that 
in the truest sense of the word. But it is not to be 
thought that Herrick, trained in the atmosphere of the 

1 The best authority in the matter of Herrick's indebtedness to 
the classics is A. W. Pollard, whose edition of Herrick is full of the 
most interesting comparisons with passages from Latin and Greek. 
Mr. Pollard provides much, but he has evidently more of the same 
kind in reserve, and it is rather tantalizing that the limits of his 
edition did not allow him to be as detailed in his illustration as 
would apparently have been easy for him. On this poem see his 
edition, I, 267. 

2 Made more definite, the recollection would perhaps be of Od. I, 
i, 17. Compare also the following lines of the poem (106). 



INTRODUCTION. xxi 

Universities, and in the somewhat conventional school of 
the Elizabethan lyrists, would not have conceived of other 
pastorals, less homely in character, and less genuine in 
their ring. Even in the truer sort there is not wanting 
some mention of Phyllis and Themilis. So there are 
others, too, less redolent of the harvest fields of Devon- 
shire, which celebrate the shepherds and shepherdesses 
of that vaguely mythic Arcadia which has been in all 
literary periods a favorite wandering-place for poetic 
fancies. Shortly after his coming into Devonshire, Her- 
rick celebrated the birth of Prince Charles in a Pas- 
toral (213; cf. the note), which was set by Mr. Nic : 
Laniere, and presented to the king. The speakers are 
Mirtillo, Amintas, and Amarillis, who bear a garland, an 
oaten pipe, and a sheephook, as gifts to the infant prince. 
In another Pastoral (422) sung before the king, Mirtillo 
bewails the loss of Amarillis to the sympathetic consola- 
tion of Montano and Silvio, his companions. In another, 
A Bucolic; or Discourse of Neat-herds (718), two rival 
swains contend in song and with the pipe, while Lalage 
listens to adjudge the victory. And in another Bucolic 
(986) Lacon endeavors with but ill success to console 
Thyrsis for the loss of a lovely steer, bitten and killed by 
a mad dog. Conventional these pastorals certainly are 
and largely lacking in the qualities which make the others 
delightful. But because they were written by Herrick 
they have a certain charm and a naturalness, which 
makes them by no means uninteresting. The local color, 
at least, is generally true, and had we no other pastorals 
of the more truly country quality, we might well be half- 
satisfied with these. 

As every one knows Herrick as the poet of old-time 
custom and tradition, so also are we apt to think of him 
as the poet of revelry and good-companionship. Perhaps 



xxii INTRODUCTION. 

as well known as any of the poet's presumed characteris- 
tics is a cheerfully bacchanalian tendency. "To Live 
Merrily and to trust to Good Verses " is, in many minds, 
the motto of the poet's life. Not wholly consistent with 
the gravity of the priestly character, the delight in con- 
viviality is looked on with kindly indulgence by the poet's 
admirers, and taken to be a minor failing that we can 
very well excuse. Now it is quite true that the general 
tone of Herrick's work is cheerful ; true also that some 
of his poems are distinctly bacchanalian. A Lyric to 
Mirth (in) is characteristic. So also The Welcome to 
Sack (197), and The Farewell (128), and A Bacchanalia?i 
Verse (655). But most of these, I incline to think, must 
have been the product of his London life, or of his years 
in Cambridge. Not that our poet, when he left the de- 
lights of London life for Devonshire, lost all desire or 
liking for the pleasures of conviviality. He was doubt- 
less as good a companion as ever. But there is nothing 
to show that he was more devoted to conviviality than 
would be proper enough even in a clergyman of to-day, 
let alone one in his own freer time. He still wrote an 
ode to Bacchus now and then, or in his poems raised the 
thyrse, but on the whole he must have taken more delight 
in the simple country pleasures which had then, perhaps, 
all the charm for him of novelty. It is more reasonable 
and agrees better with such little evidence as we possess 
to think of Herrick's real excesses as past and gone with 
his younger days, when he was, perhaps, one of those 
sealed of the Tribe of Ben, and made one of the com- 
pany at "those lyric feasts, made at the Sun, the Dog, 
the Triple Tun." 1 

1 Such also was the opinion of Dr. Grosart, but on grounds which 
appear to me insufficient. Dr. Grosart seems to assume (I, lxxi, 
clxxi) that it would have been more natural if such poems of revelry 



ixtrodcctiox. xxiii 

But if the poet paid further rites to Bacchus only in 
form, to Venus he was perhaps more faithful. Of all 
Herrick's many charming few are more charming 

than the best of the multitude written to his " many 
dainty mistresses." Many indeed the if :hey 

were at all) ; the list is a long one. beginning with the 
immortal Julia and coming down to vague Irenes and 
Myrrhas. And very charming are they too, Anthea, 
Perilla. Corinna, and many others. But none is more 
than an alluring figure half remembered from the glimpses 
of a dream. It is as though we really wandered in that 
beautiful western garden where the golden apples hung, 
and saw the wood-nymphs here and there among the 
beautiful but shy. Julia alone • —en. 1 

had been written before Herrick entered the ministry of the G: 
and then chides Mr. Edmund Gosse (I. cxciii) for having allowed 
himself to be deceived by the minglement of earlier and later poems 
in the My own grounds for believing most : I these out- 

and-out bacchanalian poems to be early are somewhat different, and 
cannot very well be rehearsed here Z :-o, especially p \ 

: . In the place cited I tried to date certain po^ rrence 

to external facts, by metrical peculiarities, and by so rr.r :::-: ::nsid- 
erations. and finding among the poems, which for such reasons could 
be placed before 1629, a certain similarity not found in those 1 
came later. I added to them some other poems which I could not 
otherwise date. By such means I found that most of the poems 
in which the convivial note is most loud were to be jui_ 
and as this result agreed 1 would otherw;- :tmed 

natural, as well as with the tone of the/ . . I arrived 

at the opinion expressed above. 

1 Mr. Edmund Gc gsc -inks 

that Julia was actually Herrick's she bore ■ 

daughter, and that she " died or pass f before Herrick left 

Cambridge." As to the last point there is not much ground for 
argument. But I must confess that Hi: does 

not seem to me any more reason for giving the poet a dau. 
than is Hi: _ him with a son. 

Both son and daughter are. to my mind, most likely imagir. 



xxiv INTRODUCTION. 

Of Julia we may form some notion if we like, for Her- 
rick loved to write of her. He celebrates her petticoat 
pounced with stars, her hair bundled up in a golden net, 
her glittering silks shot with silver, her curious laces, and 
her lawny ferns, the soft perfumes that accompanied her. 
We may even imagine her beauty, or, at least, the poet is 
willing to help us out : 

342. "UPON HIS JULIA. 

Will ye heare, what I can say 
Briefly of my Julia? 
Black and rowling is her eye, 
Double chinn'd, and forehead high : 
Lips she has, all ruby red, 
Cheeks like creame enclareted : 
And a nose that is the grace 
And proscenium of her face. 
So that we may guess by these, 
The other parts will richly please." 

He writes of gifts that passed between them, a ring 
or a pomander bracelet, of Julia's illness and recovery, 
of his absence from her. Julia he connects with his 
curious mythical imaginings, with his glowing zeal for 
that strange cult of his, concerning which there is more 
to be said later. And Julia is the object of endless little 
poems embodying numberless lover's conceits as to her 
pearly teeth, her ruby lips, her delicate skin, her sweet 
breath, and what not. 

As to whether there ever was a Julia one may believe 
pretty much as one desires. We can learn but little from 
the poems. It is more than probable that Herrick at 
one time and another in his life felt the scourge of 
Venus, and more than probable too is it that the object 
of his devotion inspired him to verse. So far one can go 
with the utmost safety. But to assume that all the poems 



INTRODUCTION. XX V 

to Julia represent actualities, to assume even that they are 
all addressed to the same real person or to any real per- 
son at all, and then to seek to reconstruct the old and 
long-lost fact from its ashes, all this is beyond the func- 
tion of criticism or beyond its power. It seems uncritical 
to imagine that the Julia to whom the three-score and 
odd poems were addressed had no real prototype. But 
it is equally uncritical to imagine that all the poems in 
question were addressed to one and the same real per- 
son. We can put our finger here and there on certain 
of the poems to Julia, to Anthea, to Electra, and say 
with certainty, "This was a real woman." But farther 
we cannot go save in fancy. 

And as food for fancy, these poems provide us with 
much that is of Herrick's best. The Nightpiece to Julia 
(621) and the lines To Anthea (267) are among the most 
often quoted of the poet's work. Only less fine and 
exquisite are the serious lines To Per ill a (14), the looked- 
for farewell To his Lovely Mistresses (636), and the fine 
morning song, Corinncfs going a- Maying (178). To tell 
the truth, little is gained (save scientific accuracy) by 
knowing whether there were real Julias and Antheas or 
not. Indeed, curiosity in such matters is rather apt to 
blind us to the poetry in our search for the reality. One 
gains the true pleasure from them without bother as to 
whether there ever were or were not some one whom the 
poet loved, and loved to think of as Julia, or Anthea, or 
Perilla. No footnote " This is a fact " is needed. 

But whether there were or were not those to whom 
these many poems were written, no such doubt attaches 
to another set of poems, numerous though hardly so in- 
teresting, namely, those written by Herrick to his friends. 
These were the poems which, so Grosart thinks, were 
designed by the poet for a special collection for his 



xxvi INTRODUCTION. 

Book of the Just (Wks. I, cxiv-cxx, cxxii). I have already 
tried, elsewhere, to show that there is no evidence to 
convince us that Herrick ever designed any collection 
of this sort. But though no formal collection was ever 
planned, it is hardly to be doubted that Herrick often 
thought with pleasure of the circle of his friends and 
of the poems he had written to celebrate their glories. 
And a very gracious and interesting collection is thus 
made. Although the poems themselves are, as a whole, 
far inferior to those of which we have just spoken, yet 
they have a human interest that makes them fascinating. 
A recent article 1 discusses many of those to whom these 
poems were written, and we shall have merely to call 
attention in the notes to the chief matters of interest. 

If there be one thing noticeable in these poems, and 
one thing interesting, it is the poet's estimate of himself 
and of his verse. Horatian here, as in many other 
respects, 2 the poet felt a pleasant satisfaction in thinking 
that those whom he chose for friends, received by virtue 
of that choice a brevet for immortality. He may often 

1 By A. W. Pollard, Macmittaris Magazine, LXVII, 142. 

2 That Herrick resembled Horace in some ways, if not in others, 
needs very little illustration. His editors have pointed out the 
resemblance of his poetic quality to Martial and Catullus. As far 
as the formal qualities of their poetry are concerned, Horace and 
Herrick have not much in common; but in spirit they have a great 
deal. How much of the similarity we may set down to conscious 
imitation on the part of the younger poet may be a matter of ques- 
tion, although I am inclined to think but little. When we say Her- 
rick's temper was Horatian, we mean that he loved a simple country 
life better than a more formal courtly existence, that he was devoted 
to many lovely mistresses and to many friends and patrons, that he 
looked forward to death with melancholy certainty, but that he 
firmly trusted to the excellence of his work to give him immortality. 
Each poet had much that the other lacked, but there was much also 
in common. 



INTRODUCTION. Xxvii 

have felt, too, when with those who were richer or of 
nobler birth than himself, with those who were in those 
days his patrons, that the time would come when the 
balance would hang the other way and he should be able 
to return with splendid interest the favors received in 
this world. 

Mingled with such a feeling was, for a time at least, 
the more or less frank imitation of Ben Jonson and the 
tradition of the Tribe of Ben. But this the difference 
in circumstances made less important. For Herrick 
in his best days was not a great poet surrounded by 
lesser lights, but rather a poet who lived by himself, 
whose friends were rather men of the world than men of 
letters. Now and then he speaks of his " righteous 
Tribe," but the expression is clearly but a reminiscence 
of the days of the Devil Tavern. The chief thought was 
that of his chosen friends his genius made a group, a 
gathering, which after-ages would gladly know and hold in 
mind, and this fancy of his expressed itself in varying poetic 
forms. Sometimes the circle of his friends is a City set 
with Heroes, sometimes a Calendar of rare Saintships, 
sometimes a Gem in an eternal Coronet. Sometimes 
they form his righteous Tribe, sometimes he thinks of 
them as Stars in a Poetic Firmament. Or they are a 
Plantation or a College. His poems, written for them, 
he calls a Poetic Liturgy or a Testament. 1 And for this 
Liturgy, this Testament, he has naturally an affectionate 
feeling, indeed for all his verses and for his book. Not 
every day, nor time of day, was fit to write, nor was every 
day fit to read. The good spirit must be present or the 
poet's effort was vain. And the reader, too, must be 
well tempered and attuned to the poet's work. As was 

1 For some discussion of this question, v. G., I, cxviii; P., I, 314, 
and Diss., pp. 12-15. 



xxviii INTRODUCTION. 

more customary then than nowadays, his verses got abroad, 
were copied and passed from hand to hand ; some were 
published in a more or less fragmentary form. And so 
he gathered them together for publishing and prepared 
to send them forth into the world. He looked upon his 
collection as one would look upon a favorite child about 
to start out in the world to make his fortune. He hopes 
that there will be such as will be kind to it, and bespeaks 
the patronage of his friends and of other souls akin to 
his. So also does he somewhat fear an evil reception at 
the hands of the ill-disposed, and against this he steels 
his heart and calls down various evils on the unappreci- 
ative. 

6. "TO THE SOUR READER. 

If thou dislik'st the piece thou light'st on first, 
Think that of all, that I have writ, the worst: 
But if thou read'st my Book unto the end, 
And still dost this, and that verse, reprehend, 
O perverse man ! If all disgustful be, 
The extreme scab take thee and thine for me." 

Even a worse lot is not absent from his mind. Books 
come to other uses than merely to be read, and so may 
his. He sometimes conjures up sad pictures (846, 962, 
1 127), the fire, the grocer's shop, the careless reader. 

In general, however, Herrick trusted to his verse to 
find a good reception, and believed that his book could 
take care of itself, and not only of itself but of its maker 
as well. Not only should his friends have immortality, 
but far more would he himself remain in the minds of 
men, his name engraven on a pillar more enduring than 
many of those set up for such as in their day had had 
much greater fame than his. 1 

1 It is worth noting as characteristic of the poetry of the time, 
poetry largely marked by fashion and by fancy, that the last poem 



INTRODUCTION. xxix 

These poems border closely upon the autobiographical. 
Nor are there lacking many more strictly of such a char- 
acter. More even than most lyric poets does Herrick 
take his readers into his confidence, or perhaps we ought 
to say that in minor matters he is more garrulous and 
confidential. We have many poems in which he cele- 
brates the circumstances of his domestic life. Mostly 
do these seem to be poems of Devonshire ; they give us 
the life of the vicar, rather than the student's life, or the 
young poet's in London. We hear much of his content 
in the country and of his grange or private wealth. He 
lived, as has already been said, with Prudence Baldwin, 
his housekeeper, with Tracy, his spaniel, Phil, the sparrow, 
with the goose and the kitling, and, if tradition tells 
aright, with that convivial pig, whose ujme is unknown 
and whom the poet seemed to think unworthy c f immor- 
tality. 

In his parsonage in Devonshire, Herrick lived a pleas- 
ant, peaceful life, — a life which he heartily enjoyed 
despite the recurrence now and then of the reminiscence 
of wilder days of unrestrained mirth. The simple things 
of the country were a great delight to him and he heartily 
loved the old-fashioned country ways. Still it cannot be 
denied that at times he hated Devonshire with a fierce 
and bitter hatred. There is no doubtful sound in some 
half a dozen poems. 1 

in the Hesperides, the poem in which Herrick expresses the idea just 
mentioned, is written in the actual form of a pillar. So one of the 
last poems in the Noble Numbers is in the form of a cross. Readers 
of contemporary poetry will not be at a loss for illustrations. We 
may note particularly faster Wings and The Altar, by George Her- 
bert, as examples of the same fashion influencing a mind of very 
different character. 

1 51, 86, 278, 458, 715. 



xxx INTRODUCTION. 

458. "UPON HIMSELF. 

Come leave this loathed country-life, and then 

Grow up to be a Roman Citizen. 

Those mites of time, which yet remain unspent, 

Waste thou in that most civil government. 

Get their comportment, and the gliding tongue 

Of those mild men, thou art to live among: 

Then being seated in that smoother Sphere 

Decree thy everlasting topic there. 

And to the farm-house ne'er return at all, 

Though granges do not love thee, cities shall." 

And in another poem, written it may be on his final 
return to London, we have the same thought : 

715. "HIS RETURN TO LONDON. 

Fr^m the dull confines of the drooping West, 

To see the day spring from the pregnant East, 

Ravish'd in spirit, I come . . . 

... I am a free-born Roman ; suffer then, 

That I amongst you live a citizen. 

London my home is, though by hard fate sent 

Into a long and irksome banishment ; 

Yet since call'd back, henceforward let me be, 

O native country, repossess'd by thee ! 

For, rather than I'll to the West return, 

I'll beg of thee first here to have mine urn. 

Weak I am grown, and must in short time fall, 

Give thou my sacred reliques burial." 

Rather more importance than they deserve has been 
given to such poems, or rather, no effort has been made 
to reconcile them with those which express feelings quite 
the reverse. It may be that no explanation is necessary, 
and yet a word or two will not be out of place. Such 
differences of feeling may be thought of in several ways. 
It is not impossible that the poems expressing delight in 
the country were all written in the earlier years of his 



INTRODUCTION. xxxi 

life in Devonshire and the others in later years. We 
may hold that the poet was at first charmed, but that in 
time he became weary. Or precisely the contrary may 
have been the case. He may at first have been con- 
stantly longing to return to London, but on a longer stay 
and a truer sympathy he may have given up his earlier 
hatred and become filled with a feeling quite the reverse. 
Or, again, it is perfectly comprehensible that both series 
of poems should have been the fruit of the same series of 
years. A man of moods will think his surroundings first 
detestable and then delightful, or vice versa, not only in 
the course of a single year, but in the course of a single 
day. We must remember that these poems of Herrick 
are not necessarily the record of continued thought or 
feeling. A single half-hour of despondency may have 
stamped itself into eternity by a fortunate verse, and so 
outweigh months of less expressive pleasure. Some such 
view as this last seems, on the whole, most comprehen- 
sible. Herrick sometimes hated Devonshire, sometimes 
loved it. We might think that it depended on the 
weather, were it not that the poems which express dis- 
gust are far fewer than we should then imagine. 

So we must not allow these examples of impatience, or 
of a temper colored by the blues, to do more than modify 
our notion of Herrick's attachment to the country. The 
instances of his thorough delight and appreciation are 
far too many. He was evidently delighted in the sights 
and sounds of country life, in its sport and in its labor, 
in all the great things and little which went to make up 
the daily round. 

Mr. Gosse has noticed that Herrick's pleasure in coun- 
try scenery is almost entirely of the domestic sort. To 
tell the truth, we should hardly expect to find in Her- 
rick's day and generation the same pleasure in the wild- 



xxx ii INTRODUCTION. 

ness and ruggedness of natural scenery that exists in 
ours. The most beautiful country sight to Herrick, 
whether in Devonshire or elsewhere, lay in the country 
flowers. Perhaps he had a garden of his own. But we 
never hear anything of his cultivating it, and it may well 
be fancied that the poet was wise enough to know that 
for one who loves flowers in a poetical way only, a friend's 
garden is as good as one's own and oftentimes better. 

In his earlier days, it may have been that Herrick 
loved to imagine how 

" All the shrubs, with sparkling spangles, show 
Like morning sun-shine tinselling the dew. 
Here, in green meadowes, sits eternall May, 
Purfling the margents, while perpetual day 
So double gilds the air, as that no night 
Can ever rust th' enamel of the light." 1 

And in such a time and temper it was enough, we 
may think, to have the conventional wreaths of roses and 
myrtles and lilies, or the crowns of ivy and laurel and 
bays. But in after years, I take it, his affections grew, 
and in the garden of his thoughts, at least, he had great 
luxuriance. The primrose ("the sweet Infanta of the 
year"), the gilliflower (does he call it July flower in 
jest?) and the marigold he had, and a many others too, 
wall-flowers and daffodils, rosemary and rue, pansies 
and pinks, tulips and hyacinths, violets and daisies, jessa- 
mine and cowslips, eglantine and honeysuckle and sweet- 
briar and woodbine. A stretch of the imagination was 
it, perhaps, when he would have orange flowers and 
almond blossoms for Lady Abdie (375). 

A favorite fancy with Herrick was of a sort of evolu- 
tion more poetical in a sense than that of Darwin, though 

1 The Apparition of his Mistress ($77)- 



INTR OD UC TION. xxx i i i 

not so well substantiated by the order of the universe. 
He writes : 

505. "HOW MARIGOLDS CAME YELLOW. 

Jealous girls these sometimes were, 
While they liv'd, or lasted here : 
Turn'd to flowers still they be 
Yellow mark'd for jealousy." 

So also he tells us how roses first came red (where he 
offers two hypotheses) and lilies white. So also can he 
tell us of the wall-flower, how it came first and why it had 
its name. He found out how violets came blue and 
primroses green : he even formulates a theory of Why 
Flowers cha?ige Color (37). So far did his love of science 
carry him. In general, however, he was well content to 
enjoy the flowers' loveliness without care for their origin. 

And not only in their beauty but in their fragrance. 
Herrick, in common with many other poets, took a keen 
delight in the beautiful things that appeal to the senses. 
But though many other poets have enjoyed such things 
as please the eye and the ear, and even the touch, Her- 
rick stands almost alone among the poets in his leaning 
to the delights of perfume. In this characteristic he 
resembled Mahomet. Like the gardens of paradise, Her- 
rick's Hesperides is pervaded by the odor of burning in- 
cense and fragrant gums. Between the trees and under 
the golden apples passes the beautiful Julia, dispensing 
aromatics from her rustling silks. 

" How can I choose but love and follow her 
Whose shadow smells like milder pomander ! 
How can I choose but kisse her, whence does come 
The storax, spikenard, myrrh, and ladanum." (487.) 

A pomander, by the way, was a mixture of perfume 
carried in. a silver ball : Julia, who was, doubtless, well 



xxxiv INTRODUCTION. 

aware of her poet's fancies, sent Herrick a pomander 
bracelet. The right pomander, it appears, was made of 
labdanum, benzoin, both storaxes, ambergris, civet, and 
musk. For civet Herrick seems to have had no especial 
affection, and for aught we know he was acquainted with 
one kind of storax only. But in the other ingredients 
mentioned he delighted, as also in balm (" the Arabian 
dew" he calls it), galbanum, cassia, frankincense and 
myrrh. His imagination went back to the costly spike- 
nard of ancient days, and he loved to chafe a bit of 
amber until it gave forth its warm fragrance. In fact, 
Herrick was clearly an amateur in perfumes. But not 
only the perfumes of commerce were his joy, amber- 
gris from the West Indies and gums from the East, but 
everywhere about him in the country did he revel in all 
the many opportunities given by flower and fruit. Most 
fragrant of all his poems are the lines To the Most Fair 
and Lovely Mistress Anne Soame (375), which are heavy 
with essence of jessamine, with orange-flowers and al- 
mond-blossoms, not forgetting, on the one hand, the 
amber bracelet and the maiden pomander, or, on the 
other, " the smell of morning's milk and cream," or " of 
roasted warden or baked pear." 1 Nor was he uncon- 
scious of his peculiar sensibility, as witness the lines in 
98, Being once Blind, his Request to Biancha : 

1 The argument that Herrick cared for perfumes is of course 
based largely on the frequency with which he mentions them. 
Compare the Hesperides with all Shakespeare's plays, for instance. 
Further it may be held that although reference to the more com- 
monly known perfumes argues but little (for such allusion might 
readily be conventional), yet the noticing such odors as, for ex- 
ample, in the last half of the verses to Lady Abdie, shows that 
the sense of smell was far more developed with him than with most 
men. The goddess Isis, who at one time absorbed some of his 
attention, appears to have been especially fascinating through her 
fragrance (cf. note to 197). 



INTR OD UC TION. xxx v 

" Go then afore, and I shall well 
Follow thy perfumes by the smell." 

His love for perfumes was greater than his love for 
music, and yet there are not a few little poems scattered 
here and there which show that the poet was at least not 
unacquainted with musical pleasures. He seems to have 
known the best composers of the day, either personally 
or by reputation. His songs were set by Henry Lawes 
and by Ramsey, and he refers to William Lawes, Dr. 
Wilson, Lanier, and Gouter. And whatever knowledge 
of music or feeling for it he might have had, he once or 
twice found a very perfect expression for what he heard, 
as in the lines To Music to becalm his Fever (227): 

" Fall on me like a silent dew, 
Or like those maiden showers, 
Which by the peep of day, do strew 
A baptime o'er the flowers." 

Julia could sing and play, it would appear, — the poet 
thinks of her walking in her chamber 



^tere 



Melting melodious words to lutes of amber." 



qre is not very much in the Hesperides that reminds 
us that Herrick was a clergyman./ Indeed, according to 
our modern conception of the priestly character, his 
poetry, as far as we have already spoken of it, is not 
merely secular in quality, but even unclerical. Later we 
shall turn our attention to the Noble Numbers, or the 
poems with which Herrick sought to make amends, as it 
were, for the unpriestly character of the Hesperides. We 
shall see that, though not by any means the equals of his 
secular poetry, they are at least sincere, and they do indi- 
cate a religious side of his character of which without them 
we should have hardly dreamed. But although a sincere 
religious seriousness may well have been either a phase 



xxxv i INTRODUCTION. 

in Herrick's life or a thread running through his whole 
character, it will be readily acknowledged that we find in 
his temper and his work little of that glowing zeal which 
marks Herbert, or of that religious ecstasy which marks 
Crashaw. Some of Herrick's work is seriously devout, 
but there is little religious enthusiasm. Yet the time was 
one when religious enthusiasm was in the air. 

It seems to me that Herrick's nature had its devotional 
side, but that he found little in the church of which he 
was a priest which called it forth. Had he been a 
Roman Catholic, the case might very possibly have been 
different ; but as it was, it seems evident that the reli- 
gious side of his nature found little expression in the direc- 
tions which appear to us to have been the most natural. 
There is no reason to suppose that Herrick slighted the 
duties of his position ; but, except for the few poems in 
the Noble Numbers which ring true, there is little reason 
to suppose that he went into those duties heart and soul. 
It was not that there was no opportunity, it was that 
somehow Herrick never saw the opportunity. So the 
devotional side of his character frittered itself away. 
Occasionally it rose to the seriousness of the lines To his 
Sweet Saviour (N. N, 77) ; occasionally, perhaps, he put 
his heart into the traditional usages of the country, find- 
ing there expression for the feeling that might have been 
turned elsewhere, — and occasionally his religious emo- 
tion was strangely turned and formed by the strength of 
his own fancy. 

To Herrick the two greatest things of life were Love 
and Death, — and his mind turned constantly to the 
thought of one or the other. And finding in his own 
religion no true satisfaction for his whole feeling, it 
would really seem as though he had sometimes fancied, 
half-seriously, half in sport, a strange cult of imaginary 



INTRODUCTION. xxxvii 

deities in the ritual of whose service, had it ever existed, 
he might have found a satisfaction which was given to 
him nowhere else. More than a fancy this could not be, 
and yet it gives the feeling to some of the most curious 
and even, in some cases, the most sincere of his poems. 

Several times he bids his mistress to remember the 
proper funeral rites when he shall die. The lines To 
Perilla (14) certainly have strength of feeling behind 
them, and certainly that feeling is neither Christian nor 
what we should call pagan. To Anthea (22) is less earn- 
est, but it may be mentioned as well. So His Charge to 
Julia (629). But the other verses To Anthea (55) are 
again full of emotion. It is true that the main thought 
of these poems is one which might well exist in any 
serious-minded man, and which is observable elsewhere 
in Herrick. Still the curious definiteness of circum- 
stance, the prescribing of these strange ceremonies, in- 
vented or borrowed from any source, is a different note. 

As with death, so with love. In " Love's Religion " x 
Julia was Flaminica Dia/is, and the poem written to her 
with that name (541) is very curious. Even if written 
before taking orders (Mr. Gosse thinks it was), the last 
two lines are such as strike the attention, to say nothing 
more. As Julia was the Queen Priest, so was Herrick 
the Rex Sacrorum {To Julia, 976). There were altars 
erected to the mysterious gods, — altars which must be 
served with diligence and devotion under pain of high 
displeasure (cf. also To Electra, 838). In The Sacrifice 
(872) he gives us a snatch of the ritual, and in To Groves 
(451) we have a hint of the martyrology and the calendar 
of saints. 

To take these poems seriously would of course be folly. 
Herrick might bring into his verse strange allusions to 

1 The phrase occurs in the lines To his Mistresses (38). 



xxxviii INTRODUCTION. 

some mystic cult whose gods were Love and Death, but he 
never believed in any such strange gods. No, nor did he 
ever seriously conceive them. But so many poems as 
we have in this strange strain show us an inarticulate 
passion, an emotional nature, which, could it have found 
the right channel, would have grown strong and vigorous. 
These religious dreams were dreams and nothing more, 
but not the dreams of a Christian nor dreams of the gods 
of Greece and Rome. His gods were the shadowy fig- 
ures of his own fancy. They were like the terrible imag- 
inings of a child in the dark : he knows to a certainty 
that no one is there and yet feels sure that some one is. 

As here Herrick seems to have gods of his own, so in 
yet a greater degree had he his own private gods to 
guard his household. More properly speaking there 
was his one household god or Lar. Perhaps he too ob- 
tained with the poet an affectionate reality : " Jocund 
Lar" (427) or "Lucky Lar" (333) he calls him, or the 
" Good Demon " (334). But sometimes he thinks of 
more than one, the Lares (478) or Closet Gods (654). 

To the gods of Greece and Rome, or, more properly 
speaking, of Rome only, Herrick paid proper poetic wor- 
ship, and of them he made the conventional use. He 
even went a step farther and wrote a little cycle of 
poems, one to each of the greater gods, promising that 
if they would be auspicious he would offer appropriate 
sacrifice : to Apollo, swans ; to Bacchus, daffodils ; to 
Neptune, a tunnyfish ; to Venus, myrtles ; to Juno, a 
peacock ; to Mars, a wolf ; and to Minerva, a broadfaced 
owl. So also to Aesculapius was a verse dedicated when 
the poet was in great grief over the illness of Prudence 
Baldwin. He promised a cock if she should recover, 
and let us hope he paid the vow, for Prudence did not 
die (just then), but lived on for thirty years or more. 



INTR OD UC TION. xxxix 

With whatever unction Herrick celebrated the rites of 
the church on those occasions which are ever recurrent 
in life, he was at least careful that the muses at such sea- 
sons should not remain unforgotten. Hence we have a 
number of Epithalamia and a number of Epitaphs, and 
among them are some very characteristic poemsr^ Bach- 
elor though he was, and though he sometimes swore he 
would never curtail his freedom by taking a wife, yet 
Herrick was warm-hearted and of a loving nature. To 
him a marriage among his friends seems to have been 
the occasion for true delight and happiness. Lover as 
he often was, the ideal beauty and sweetness of the 
union of two lovers had a powerful effect upon him, an 
effect which, had he been of stronger and nobler mind, 
would have produced finer poems, but which, as it was, 
has given us some of the best specimens of a form of 
poetry now almost neglected. And as the thought of 
marriage had for him a great fascination, so also did the 
thought of death exercise over his mind a domination no 
less imperious than the other because it appears more 
subdued. We have already seen that he often thought 
of his own end. Sometimes it was so far only as to write 
a little verse to the Robin Redbreast to take care of him 
when he could no longer take care of himself, or to the 
Cypresses to grow beside his grave, or to the grave- 
digger, called in kindly wise the bedmaker, and some- 
times it was merely in a line or two coming at the end of 
a poem in a lighter vein^/One of his longer poems, 
wherein he celebrates his pleasure in his home and in his 
friend John Wickes, begins with an imitation of " Eheu 
fugaces." So, often thoughtful of his own end, Herrick 
was moved, too, by the death of others. The titles of 
his Epitaphs are significant and pathetic. Upon a Child ; 
Upon a Virgin ; Upon a Maid that Died the Day She was 



xl INTR OD UC TION. 

Married ; Upon a Lady that Died in Childbed and left a 
Daughter behind Her; Upon a Sober Matron ; Upon an 
Old Man, a Residentiary. If Herrick was always im- 
pressed in his own case with the necessity of death, so 
in the case of others did he always see the pathos. It 
needs no great effort of the imagination to think of the 
old vicar who delighted so keenly in so many of the 
charming things of the charming world about him, gazing 
wistfully forward to the necessary end, brought contin- 
ually to his mind by the passing of those to whom death 
must have come as a stranger. 

Another set of poems in the Hesperides, — and poems 
they are, almost unique in English literature, — are the 
Gnomic Couplets or Sententious Distichs. Wise sayings 
are these : sometimes we find quatrains, but, as a rule, 
some aphorism is compressed into two lines that might 
almost make a stone for the mosaic of Pope. Of these 
little snatches there are in the Hesperides several hundred. 
They deserve far more the name " epigram " than do the 
quatrains to which that name is usually given (v. inf. 
lxiv, lxv). For the quatrains are, on the whole, entirely 
lacking in that concise point which we nowadays con- 
sider necessary to the epigram, whereas the couplets 
usually possess that characteristic to a marked degree. 

I am inclined to think that these couplets were largely 
written toward the end of Herrick's life in Devonshire. 1 
But whenever they were written they are an element in 
the Hesperides which has been passed over with too little 

1 See Diss., pp. 44 ff. The points of evidence are that they occur 
sparely in the earlier part of the book, but with great frequency 
toward the end ; that there are very many of them in the Noble 
Numbers, presumably written, to speak generally, after the Hesperides; 
that they agree in versification with Herrick's later views on verse ; 
and that they are more in accord with the temper of middle years 
than with that of youth. 



INTRODUCTION. xli 

comment. Wholly aside from any value in subject matter, 
they offer evidence of a certain characteristic of Herrick's 
mode of expression which is important. I mean the 
ability to put an idea into concise and clear-cut utterance, 
the same ability that is such a marked characteristic of 
the genius of Pope and of the other poets who are 
usually thought of in connection with Pope. Of this 
there will be more to say in another place ; at present 
it is of more interest to note the ground covered by these 
little poems. A great number are reflections called forth 
by the political events of the time. And as such they are 
of value in determining how Herrick stood on the great 
questions which in his day divided England. It has 
always been a common opinion, first, that Herrick stood 
almost entirely aloof from the controversy of his time, 
and, second, that he was an ardent and devoted Royalist. 
Although these views will by no means be reversed on a 
careful reading of his sententious utterances on politics, yet 
such a reading will give us a more accurate idea of what 
is meant by such statements than we have previously had. 
Undoubtedly, when we compare Herrick with Milton or 
Marvell, on the one hand, or with Suckling or Lovelace, 
on the other, we may say that he stood aloof from the 
quarrels of his time, as far at least as action is concerned. 
But as to the field of thought, we shall see from these 
couplets that the stormy state of things about him by no 
means left him unaffected. 1 It is true that it will not 
do to infer his opinions wholesale from these couplets. 
Doubtless they were not infrequently the expression of 
some notion that took his fancy for the time being, and 
could be hardly said to make up a part of his serious 
opinion (P., I, xxv). But where there are so many evi- 

1 See also The Bad Season makes the Poet Sad (614) and Upon 
the Troublesome Times (598). 



x lii INTRODUCTION. 

dences of consideration as here, we cannot well say that 
the poet was wholly unmoved. To tell the truth, Her- 
rick seems to have had opinions that were quite definite, 
if not extraordinary. He was a Royalist, in that he 
was loyal always to the person of the king. A Royal- 
ist, also, in that he approved theoretically of the royal 
power. But that he was an undiscriminating Royalist, a 
Royalist who backed the king in everything, good or 
bad, a firm believer that "the king can do no wrong," 
cannot be maintained. He had strong opinions on the 
duty of kings toward their people. 

782. MODERATION. 

In things a moderation keep, 

Kings ought to shear, not skin their sheep. 

863. KINGS AND TYRANTS. 

Twixt kings and tyrants there's this difference known : 
Kings seek their stcbjects'' good ; tyrants their own. 

1000. PATIENCE IN PRINCES. 

Kings must not use the axe for each offence : 
Princes cure some faults by their patience. 

1067. GENTLENESS. 

That Prince must govern with a gentle hand, 
Who will have love comply with his command. 

It is true that there were many who held such views, 
theoretically, along with so strict an adherence to the 
" Divine right " that they approved every act of the actu- 
ally reigning sovereign. It may be that Herrick was 
such a one. He was most certainly no republican : he 
had no desire for a government by the people. 



INTRODUCTION. xliii 



538. ILL GOVERNMENT. 

Preposterous is that government and rude, 
When kings obey the wilder multitude. 

345- THE POWER IN THE PEOPLE. 

Let kings command and do the best they may, 
The saucy subjects still will bear the sway. 

It was natural that Herrick should have been a Royal- 
ist ; for so many of the beautiful things that he loved 
seemed to belong by right to the Royalists rather than 
to the Puritans. But we must not believe that it was 
only through emotional sympathy that he was loyal to 
the king : he had evidently given good thought to the 
subject. 

There are many other subjects for these gnomic coup- 
lets, although none so constantly recurrent as the politi- 
cal situation of the day. The Horatian " Carpe Diem " 
supplies a few, not unnaturally; there are several on 
The Golden Mean. Some on the End rather than the 
Wayside, some on the Power of Money, some on Fame. 
In the Noble Numbers there are a number on Sin, of 
which two at least are worth remembering : 

N.N. ,37- SIN SEEN. 

When once the sin has fully acted been, 
Then is the horror of the trespass seen. 

N N, 86. SIN. 

Sin leads the way, but as it goes, it feels 

The following plague still treading on his heels. 

A greater number are on sorrow and the bearing of 
grief ; gentle and resigned are these, some in the Noble 



xliv INTR OD UC TION. 

Numbers, but more in the Hesperides ; and, lastly, there 
are not a few on Love, of which the best are, perhaps, 
29 and 841. 

We should, to-day, call such poems epigrams. But in 
the study of Herrick, the word "epigram" is a technical 
term. The poet himself applied it to a class of poems 
which have given his admirers much trouble. These so- 
called epigrams, of which there are a good number, are 
quatrains on various real or imaginary people, detailing 
each one some disagreeable personal peculiarity. They 
are often nasty (and that in the American sense); no 
other word gives their quality exactly. They are not 
merely coarse; they are not all indecent, but they are 
almost invariably nasty. It is the tradition that Herrick 
amused himself by writing these epigrams on his parish- 
ioners, but it is merely a tradition, and one without much 
foundation. 1 We have printed some specimens of them 
(183, 188, 206, 273, 420, 436, 503, 579, 706) that the 
reader might not be without means to satisfy himself on 
this point ; but a few are enough. 

Other editors have been puzzled to know just what to 
do with them. Dr. Grosart, although he prints them 
all, feels bound to assert that Herrick never meant them 
for publication, that it was the publisher who insisted on 
using them (I, cxxi, cxxii). Mr. Pollard omits them all 
that they may be printed in a detachable appendix (a 
sort of a poetical pigsty: one pities the compositor who 
had to set them up in their unrelieved nastiness). Mr. 
Edmund Gosse says that "it must be confessed . . . that 

1 It is not very likely that a parish like Dean would have had so 
very many very disagreeable people in it as must be inferred if these 
epigrams have any basis in fact. If it had really so many, we need 
not be surprised that Herrick in time became weary of it, in spite of 
its beauty. 



INTR OD UC TION. xl v 

they greatly spoil the general complexion of the book." 
Mr. Henry Morley, so far as I know, is the only editor 
who has anything to say for them. " There is truth in 
the close contact of a playful sense of ugliness with the 
most delicate perception of all forms of beauty. Her- 
rick's epigrams on running eyes and rotten teeth and the 
like, are such exaggerations as may often have tumbled 
out spontaneously in the course of playful talk, and, if 
they pleased him well enough, were duly entered in his 
book. In a healthy mind, this whimsical sense of de- 
formity may be but the other side of a fine sense of 
beauty." (Hesp. y ed. Morley, p. 7.) Except for the sug- 
gestion that Herrick may have written more epigrams 
than have been preserved to us, this view seems the most 
satisfactory. Some such idea occurred also to Swinburne, 
who says, in his preface to Mr. Pollard's edition (I, xii) : 
" It was doubtless in order to relieve this saccharine and 
'mellisonant' monotony that he thought fit to intersperse 
these interminable droppings of natural or artificial per- 
fumes with others of the rankest and most intolerable 
odor." But Swinburne does not think highly of the mix- 
ture. "A diet," he says, "of alternate sweetmeats and 
emetics is for the average of eaters and drinkers no less 
unpalatable than unwholesome." The fact is that Her- 
rick wrote the epigrams, and that fact we cannot explain 
away. In part, we may set them down to a difference in 
feeling on certain matters on the part of the seventeenth 
century and the nineteenth. But even after so much has 
been done, even after Mr. Morley's views, Herrick's epi- 
grams are rather a bitter pill for a lover of the poet to 
swallow, or rather not so much a bitter as a very bad- 
tasting one. 



x l v i INTRO D UC TION. 



III. THE NOBLE NUMBERS. 

Although Herrick was a clergyman, yet his verse in 
the Hesperides, is, as has been said, generally not merely 
secular in quality but even exceedingly unclerical, accord- 
ing to our common conception of the priestly character. 
Herrick's gnomic distichs, his epitaphs, his poems to 
friends are not out of keeping with his office of vicar, but 
the main line of thought of most of the others is not pre- 
cisely what we should expect of one in holy orders. 

Of this discrepancy Herrick was well aware. He calls 
attention to it in the first poem of the Noble Numbers. 
The Noble Numbers are his religious verses, a separate 
collection altogether, published between the same covers 
as the Hesperides. At the very outset Herrick opposes 
these pious offerings to the more profane verse which has 
gone before : he makes his Confession (N N, i) and his 
Prayer for Absolution (N. N, 2). If the Hesperides is 
found evil, he hopes that the Noble Numbers will be found 
to make amends. With such a feeling it is a bit strange 
that Herrick published both, — perhaps he had at one 
time the notion of publishing the Noble Numbers only. 
Certainly they have a separate title-page, a different date, 
and independent pagination. The date is 1647. Now 
Herrick was ejected from his vicarage in 1648. It may 
be that while he was vicar he thought only of publishing 
his pious poems, having given up his earlier ideas of 
printing all his work : on losing his position he might 
have had many reasons which would lead him to publish 
all the poems he had. If there were ever doubt in his 
mind, it was a lucky chance for us and for his fame, 
which led him to publish what he did. 

In whatever way the poems were published, we have 
in the Noble Numbers Herrick's sacred verse, and that as 



INTRODUCTION. xlvii 

a part of his whole production. It must be confessed that 
it is on the whole a most inferior part, inferior in thought 
and inferior in handling. There are, it is true, poems 
which have such coloring as reminds us of the Hesperides. 
It was with these poems in mind that Mr. Edmund Gosse 
wrote : " Where the Noble Numbers are most readable is 
where they are most secular." Such poems do give us 
the idea of singing " hymns of faultless orthodoxy, with a 
loud and lusty voice, to the old pagan airs." Indeed the 
whole criticism on the Noble Numbers in Seventeenth Cen- 
tury Studies is sound and gives one the right idea. With 
a few exceptions, the Noble Numbers is little more than 
an attempt to turn the Garden of the Hesperides into a 
Cathedral close. There are couplets on points of the- 
ology which will balance the everyday distichs. There 
are sacred songs on the Circumcision or the Nativity, 
set and sung before the King like the pastorals of more 
secular character. We have the same quaint and experi- 
mental metres in both books. We have sometimes the 
same method (a very common one, it must be admitted), 
as for instance in To Find God (N N, 3) and His Pro- 
testation to Perilla (154) or Impossibilities to his Friends 

(198). 

The result is in very few cases fortunate. There are 
hardly a dozen of the Noble Numbers that come up even 
to the average excellence of the Hesperides. These few 
it is not easy to characterize for they differ in kind and 
have by no means the like qualities. I should name as 
the best, for those who wish to study them : The Widow's 
Tears, 123 ; The Dirge of JephthaJi' s Daughter, 83 ; Upon 
Time, 38 (with a touch that reminds one of Herbert) ; A 
Thanksgiving to God for his House, 47 (cf. His Winding 
Sheet, 517); To his Saviour, a Child; 59, To his Sweet 
Saviour, 77 (which has something of the character of 



xlviii INTRODUCTION. 

the best Elizabethan sonnets); His Wish to God, 115; The 
Bellma?i, 121. These are devotional poems of a high 
order, but unfortunately Herrick did not often reach such 
a level. Either it was but rarely that his imagination 
turned in such directions (perhaps he wrote the Noble 
Numbers on Sundays and the Hesperides on week days), or 
else it may be that it was only toward the close of his life 
in Devonshire that Herrick really began to feel a certain 
emptiness and vanity in his earlier work and that his 
mind really turned into serious channels. There are 
several reasons which support such a view as this latter. 
I am inclined to believe that the Noble Numbers were the 
last written poems : the poet was trying a new vein and, 
as it turned out, no very successful one. 



IV. THE CHRONOLOGICAL EVIDENCE OF HERRICK'S 
POEMS. 

Such then are the poems of Herrick that he presented 
to the world in his book. Some few others he wrote (as 
has been remarked on page xvii) but it is by his book that 
he is really and sufficiently represented. And what does 
his book tell us of his life ? This is the first question 
that the scholar must ask himself, if only to get it out of 
the way and leave room for a freer enjoyment of the 
poems themselves. 

Here there are somewhat varying views. As a rule 
those interested in the matter have been well content 
merely to draw this or that inference from this or that 
poem, and to produce, as a result, a portrait of the poet 
as fanciful as it was charming. Until the Memorial In- 
troduction of Dr. Grosart, hardly any attempt was made 



INTRODUCTION. xlix 

to deal with the Hesperides critically. And yet there are 
few books which need more careful criticism, if we desire 
to obtain any information that we can rely on. It is easy 
enough to enjoy the Hesperides, but to learn anything 
of Herrick from his book is not so simple a matter. For 
the Hesperides is a garden without order and without 
arrangement. The poems of, it may be, thirty years and 
more appear in the most glorious confusion and with the 
most tantalizing silence as to their origin. When it is 
doubtful if Herrick were twenty or forty when he wrote 
one or another poem, when we do not know if two poems 
were written the same year or with an interval of a quarter 
of a century, it is quite obvious that we cannot be too 
cautious in drawing inferences. 

In this confusion Dr. Grosart endeavored to establish 
some order. He formed a theory as to the different 
elements which make up the book as we have it, a theory 
for which he presented the bases in pp. cxii-cxxviii of his 
Memorial Litroduction. 

Concerning the views of Dr. Grosart, I have elsewhere 
expressed myself quite fully. 1 A careful examination of 
his argument seemed to show that his results were not 
justified. Even had they been wholly borne out, they 
would not have helped us very much in the question in 
hand. I do not know that, even at best, we shall be 
very much helped ; but we may at least take precau- 
tion against going astray. In such a study it is neces- 
sary to be resolute in not assuming what we desire 
to prove. Herrick's character is to be the result, not 
the basis. We cannot begin by saying, It would be 
most likely that a man like Herrick would have written 
this, or this, at such and such a time. Intellectual self- 
respect compels us to take the trouble to find something 

1 Diss., § 4. 



1 . INTRODUCTION. 

more substantial. Until we have otherwise determined 
enough poems to get an idea of the poet's character, we 
cannot rightly infer the date of a poem therefrom. We 
must first proceed by other means. Now other means 
are by no means numerous. A good many poems may 
be dated with some exactness on account of allusions to 
known events. Upo?i his Sister-in-law, Mistress Elizabeth 
Herrick (72), would have been written in 1643, the year 
in which Mistress Herrick died. To the King upon his 
Coming with his Army into the West (77) would naturally 
have been written in 1644, the year in which the ex- 
pedition in question took place. Dr. Grosart and Mr. 
Pollard have done much toward determining such dates 
and I have gratefully availed myself of their work in this 
direction. It is also possible to say, to a limited extent, 
" such and such a poem is more likely to have been written 
in Devonshire, — or in London." But here we must not 
be too eager. It seems as though The Hock-cart (250) or 
The Wake (763) must have been written in Devonshire. 
So A Frolic (584) or To Live Merrily (201) should have 
been written during his tavern life in London. But this 
mode of determining is less certain. 

Another help comes from a study of Herrick's versifi- 
cation. Everybody is familiar with the literary change of 
heart which sent the verse of Shakespeare out of fashion 
in favor of the verse of Pope. A comparison of Herrick's 
longer poems shows development in the same direction 
(pp. lvii, lviii), and so gives us conjecturally the approxi- 
mate date of a good many of his longer poems. An- 
other form of evidence, pointed out also by Mr. 
Pollard, lies in the general distribution of the poems. 
It seems probable that the greater number of poems in 
the first part of the Hesperides were written before Herrick 
had put together his collections in 1640, and that most 



IN TROD UC TION. \[ 

of 'he others were written afterward. Mr. Pollard's argu- 
ment is based on the presence of poems which can be 
dated early, in the first part only, and on the lack of MS. 
copies of poems in the last half. My own argument, 
whicn was made before I had seen Mr. Pollard's edition, 
rests chiefly upon a comparison of the poems in the 
latter part of the book with the Introductory Verse, and 
upon the prevalence of Gnomic Poems in the latter part 
of the Hesperides and in the Noble Numbers (Diss., p. 44). 

From such preliminary work as this, we may, I believe, 
date enough poems to give us the general drift of the 
poet's development. I am myself accustomed to think 
of three periods ; having for dividing points the years 
1629 and 1640. I would gladly have ground for dividing 
the first period into two, one of the poet's university 
days, the other of his days in London, but I find no 
special reasons. The second period includes his Devon- 
shire life down to the time when, in 1640, he planned to 
publish his poems. The last would embrace the time 
between 1640 and the final publishing. 

Of these points of division, the first is, of course, of 
such a nature as might readily have been expected to 
work a change in the feeling and character of the poet. 
Up to that time he had been a student at Cambridge and 
a young poet in London. Afterward he was a country 
vicar in a distant part of England. That his earlier 
work should be marked by qualities of exuberance and 
license which are not so noticeable later would be but 
natural. The second point of time, however, is quite 
arbitrary, and is chosen only because it is possible in 
many cases to infer that a poem comes before it or after. 
The gathering together of his poems for publication is, of 
course, a point in Herrick's life, but not such a point as 
necessarily marks a change in his character and way of 



Hi INTRODUCTION. 

looking at things. But some point of time must be 
chosen to separate the poems- of Herrick's earlier mood 
from those which came later, and this is a convenient one 
to choose. 

The poems which can be definitely assigned to the first 
period are such as bear out the conclusion we might 
naturally have come to without them. The two poems 
on Sack (128, 197), The Farewell to Poetry (p. 13:.;), The 
Apparition (577), His Daughter's Dowry, The Cruel Maid 
(159), are poems all of a piece in character as well as in 
versification. In versification they are the work of the 
admirer of Jonson ; in character they are decidedly secu- 
lar to say the least. The more we read them, the more 
are we inclined to agree with Dr. Grosart, though on dif- 
ferent grounds, that the great number of Herrick's erotic 
and bacchanalian poems belong here. We are not sur- 
prised that the other evidence should put in this period 
the two fine Epithalamia, To Sir Southwell and his Lady 
(149), and On Sir Clipseby Crew and his Lady (283), 
which have a warmth and glow to them that is hardly in 
harmony with the more self-restrained character of the 
Devonshire poems. Here, too, would I put the fine 
Corinna's going a- Maying (178). 

After he' had been in Devonshire for ten years or so, 
Herrick gathered together his poems with a view to pub- 
lication. The book was even entered in the Stationers' 
Register, but was not published. We can form some 
idea of its contents (p. li), and excluding such as we 
believe to have been written in Cambridge or London, 
we have the poems which give us our notion of Herrick 
during the first years of his stay in Devonshire. It is 
from these poems that we get the idea of Herrick the 
country-lover. Here come the poems on country customs 
and country pleasures. They are fresh and happy poems : 



INTRODUCTION. liii 

the poet is in love with his surroundings. If we must 
put here any of the poems expressing disgust of Devon- 
shire, we may believe that they represent transitory moods 
rather than a prevalent temper. Whoever will read The 
Hock-cart (250), The Wake (763), The Country Life (664), 
His Content in the Country (554), To Mrs. Anne Soame 
(375), To the Maids (618), and To Phillis (523), will, I 
believe, have little difficulty in believing that they were 
written in Devonshire. And it is these poems which 
show especially the more restrained and indeed confined 
versification which we have thought characteristic of 
Herrick's later manner. I believe, also, that a general 
restraint and control will be observed in the thought and 
the handling. 

In the later years, between 1640 and 1648, the poems 
take on a graver tone. The characteristic Devonshire 
poems have been already written : those that come at the 
end of the Hesperides are by no means among the best. 
The early freshness seems largely lost and we have 
apparently many of the sententious distichs. The Noble 
Numbers, too, would in great part seem to belong here. 
Here, too, come not a few poems to public persons or on 
public events, which latter at this time sometimes had 
their depressing influence on the poet. The poems on 
"loathed Devonshire" would hardly be so much out of 
place here as earlier. It may well be that Herrick was 
by no means sorry to be superseded. 

If what has been said does not supply us with very 
full material for making out our poet's life, and character, 
it does at least one thing worth doing. It shows some 
rational ground for dispelling some of the contradictions 
that have long existed in our ideas of Herrick as a man. 
Herrick loved Devonshire and hated it: we have seen 
that there is good reason to suppose that the poems 



Hv INTRODUCTION. 

which express his affection were the product of his 
earlier years in his vicarage, and that later a graver tone 
prevails which might often have deepened into disgust. 
Herrick enjoyed a simple country life and yet delighted 
in wild orgies. But we have seen that there is good 
reason to suppose that the bacchanalia belong to his life 
in London or Cambridge, the poems of the country life 
to the first years in Devonshire. In some such way, too, 
may we think of the curious difference in Herrick's 
religious poetry. Some of the most secular was prob- 
ably written while in London or early in Devonshire. 
And the most theological are all of a piece with the sen- 
tentious couplets which were probably the fruit of his 
last years in Devonshire. 

But it would be futile as well as foolish to try to make 
out a character for Herrick which should reduce him to 
the dead level of what we may imagine properly consist- 
ent. He was of a quick, emotional nature, feeling one 
thing now, another later. He could doubtless write, in 
the morning, one of the prettiest of his poems on flowers 
or to one of his girls, and in the evening turn out an 
epigram of the nastiest kind. Or else he could feel to 
the full the sweet gentleness of his own vicarage and of 
his country life, and in another hour he could pen some 
lines boisterous with reminiscence of his London days. 
One day he was calmly delighted with Devonshire, and 
the next he was disgusted with it. It is the good side of 
a study of Herrick that with the material at hand, we 
can never be very dogmatic ; we must always leave the 
final imagining to each separate reader. But the general 
groundwork that can be settled is by no means useless, 
even though it do not accomplish everything. 



INTR 01) UC TION. 1 V 

V. VERSIFICATION AND VOCABULARY. 

One of the satisfying and refreshing things about Her* 
rick's poetry is his facility in verse-form. His words 
seem to bubble into metre with the spontaneous ease of 
a bird. Although the greater part of his work is in com- 
mon forms, yet there is enough in freer mood to show 
that his ingenuity in this particular was practically inex- 
haustible, or, more accurately, that his imagination was 
never weary of creating new forms for his fancies. 

His verse-forms vary from the conventional couplet or 
the stanza with alternate rhyme, to a freedom of con- 
struction that reminds one of a modern ode. And yet this 
freedom is never licentious ; the same structure is often 
carried through stanza after stanza with masterly regu- 
larity and ease. And, in writing couplets or stanzas of 
alternate rhyme, Herrick by no means confined himself 
to one given form ; we have decasyllabics, octosyllabics, 
and so down even to the dissyllabic triplets of 477> Upon 
his Departure Hence. Nor was he content with such 
diversity : even in the common following rhyme he varies 
the metre so as to produce the grave effect of His Wind- 
ing Sheet (517), or A Thanksgiving to God for His House 
{N. JV., 47) ; the reminiscence of the classic elegiac as 
in A Country Life (106), or A Panegyric to Sir Lewis 
Pemberton (377) ; the elaborate stanzaic forms of A Nup- 
tial Song (283), or His Age (336) ; or the delicate color- 
ing of To the Yew and Cypress (280), or The Primrose 
(582). In like manner, but not with such variety, does he 
use the alternate rhyme, as in Upofi fulia's Hair (486), 
or His Grange (726). Some forms where the versifica- 
tion may seem at first wholly unrestrained will be regu- 
larly repeated in recurring stanzas, as in To Laurels (89), 
An Ode to Endy?nion Po?'ter (185), To Primroses (257), 



Ivi INTRODUCTION. 

or To Daffodils (316). Somewhat less elaborate in stan- 
zaic structure are the lines to Clipseby Crew (546), to 
Ben Jonson (913), To Blossoms (469). Now and then we 
have just a snatch at the end of some decasyllabics, as 
in A Pastoral (422), or 2o a Gentlewoman (164). In 
The Tear (123) the form is used with peculiar happiness 
in the first stanza. So also in To Music (227). 

Two minor curiosities may be mentioned. Several 
times Herrick divides a word and rhymes with the first 
syllable, as in 

" Spice- 
ing the chaste air with fumes of Paradise." 

— A Nuptial Song (283), st. 2 (cf. also st. 6). 

There are also a number of examples in Oberorts Feast 
(444). And rarely he rhymes following words within the 
line, as 

"Two smelling, swelling, bashful cherrylets" 
or 

" a virgin merry, cherry-lip'd." 

— The Description of a Woman, lines 20 and 22. 

But all such enumeration and comment does little 
more than call attention to what any one can readily 
enough appreciate without criticism. 

Swinburne says of Herrick : " The apparent or external 
variety of his versification is, I should suppose, incom- 
parable," and here most people would incline to agree 
with him, excepting perhaps from the comparison Swin- 
burne himself. It does not seem to me that he is so 
happy in his view that Herrick's "more ambitious or 
pretentious lyrics are merely magnified or prolonged 
songs." With such a judgment we can only agree by 
throwing out of consideration a good number of Her- 
rick's longer poems, which are not songs and have no 
resemblance to songs. It may be that Swinburne does 



INTR OB UC TION. 



lvii 



throw these out of consideration, for he uses the word 
"lyrics," and these are certainly not lyrics. There are 
a number of Herrick's longer poems written in the deca- 
syllabic couplet, not his best work, perhaps, but, as will 
be seen at a glance, very characteristic. Aside from the 
question of their poetic value, however, these poems are 
of interest to the student of literary history for the light 
they throw on the development in the seventeenth cen- 
tury of that famous form which in its variations has been 
almost an index of the poetic excellence of its time. As 
is well known, the result of that century was that the run- 
ning freedom of the Elizabethans became the formal 
elegance of Pope. Concerning the exact history of the 
change there have been various opinions, but no one 
would be astonished to see that the tendency showed 
itself in the poetry of Herrick. For such as are inter- 
ested in the matter, I transfer from a former publication 
a table showing the frequency of run-on lines and coup- 
lets in Herrick's longer poems. The poems selected are 
all written either in decasyllabic or octosyllabic couplets, 
and are more than twenty lines in length. From shorter 
poems it seemed hardly fair to form an opinion in either 
direction. The percentages are made by dividing the 
number of run-on couplets and midstopped lines by the 
number of couplets, and are useful, of course, only for 
comparative purposes. 





Percentage of 


Percentage of 




mid-stopped 


overrun 




lines. 


couplets. 


577 The Apparition . . . 


■ • 52 


33 


293 Oberon's Feast . . . . 


• • 50 


22 


444 Oberon's Palace . . . 


• • 43 


33 


128 The Welcome to Sack . 


• • 43 


21 


197 His Farewell to Sack 


. . 40 


35 


136 The Suspicion .... 


• • 37 


28 


His Farewell unto Poetry 


• • 37 


!5 



lviii INTRODUCTION. 

Percentage of Percentage of 
mid-stopped overrun 

lines. couplets. 

467 The Parting Verse 29 30 

157 The Cruel Maid 25 33 

His Daughter's Dowry .... 11 16 

319 A New Year's Gift 9 8 

664 The Country Life 4 3 

N. N. 263 Good Friday 3 2 

223 The Temple 2 6 

N. N. 230 His Meditation Upon Death . . 1 o 

672 A Paranaeticall 13 o 

182 The Captived Bee 11 o 

523 To Phillis o 11 

618 To the Maids o 11 

640 The Beggar to Mab o 8 

The Description of a Woman . o 3 

554 His Content in the Country . . o o 

375 To Mrs. Anne Soame . . . . o o 

250 The Hock Cart o o 

763 The Wake o o 

2 To His Muse o o 



In the Dissertation often cited, I used this table as a 
help toward laying down bases for chronology. It 
seemed natural to suppose that the difference might rep- 
resent a development : if so, it would be also natural 
that the development should be in the line of the prog- 
ress during the century. The poems with most run-on 
couplets would then be earlier. Those with none would 
be later. This opinion is somewhat confirmed by the 
large proportion of gnomic couplets in the latter part of 
the Hesperides. Mr. Pollard (II, 291) supposes that the 
poems in the latter half of the book were, as a rule, written 
later. From different reasoning, I came independently 
to the same result {Diss., § 8). The habit of writing 
these little distichs would have tended to make his pen- 
tameter couplets more " correct " ; or it may be that the 



INTRODUCTION. Hx 

correctness of his pentameter turned him to writing the 
distichs. In either case it seems to me probable that, 
as Herrick grew older, he changed his ideas, or at least 
his practice, as to enjambement to some degree, though, 
of course, he never reached the smooth-clipped charac- 
teristics of Pope, or even of Waller. Nor is it probable 
that he would have cared to do so, had he conceived of 
such versification. 

Although it will not be possible to present here any- 
detailed study of Herrick's vocabulary, yet it will not be 
out of place to note a few points, which, with the glos- 
sary of uncommon words, will do something to indicate 
to the linguistic student what interest may attach to Her- 
rick's poetry in this respect. 

Most noteworthy is Herrick's freedom in word forma- 
tion. Undoubtedly the English language was by no 
means so stiff at that time as it has since become. Even 
a very little reading of Elizabethan English will show a 
flexibility of language which allowed new formations with 
a frequency now uncommon. It would almost seem, 
however, that Herrick availed himself of the possibilities 
of word-formation with greater freedom than most of his 
contemporaries. It is not possible at present to be sure 
whether some special form were or were not coined by 
Herrick : in the following list there are probably a good 
number of words which may be found in other authors, 
but many of them are undoubtedly new formations. 

i . Verbs compounded with be-. Bedangling, 944 ; befringed, D. 
W.; x behung, 336; bepearled, 582; bepimpled, 108; bepranked, 
523; bescattered, D. W.; beset, N A 7 "., 96; beshivered, N. N, 3; 
bestrewed, 506; besmears, 201; bespangling, 178; bestrutted, 293; 
bewearied, 336; bestroking, 283; bewash, 1028; besweetened, 293; 
bethwack, 1053. 

1 The Description of a Woman. 



lx INTRODUCTION. 

2. Verbs compounded with circum-. Circumbinds, 223 ; circum- 
crossed, 653; circumflanked, 747; circumfused, 179; circummortal, 
445; circumspangle, 806; circum volving, 169; circumwalk, 35 : cf., 
also, circumgyration, 968 ; circumspacious, 924. 

3. Verbs compounded with inter-. Interplaced, 986 ; intertalked, 
268. 

4. Verbs compounded with re- . Reaspire, 98 ; reconverse, 698 ; 
recollect, 722, 962; redelivers, 323; repossess, 963; resojourn, 86; 
reworn, 148 : cf., also, remeeting, 355. 

5. Diminutives in -let. Armilet, 47 ; cherrylet, D. W.; flagonet, 
784; flosculet, 316; nervelet, 41 ; niplet, 190; pipkinet, N. N, 130; 
rubylet, 654; trammelet, D. W.; thronelet, 210; zonulet, 35. 

6. Diminutives in -ling. Firstling, 36; fondling, 23; kitling, 106, 
200, 336, 444; shepherdling, 2 {cf. 523 and p-lxi); steerling, 718; 
sweetling, 635; youngling, 250, 257, 283, 377, 577, 635, 664. 

7. Nouns in -ment. Affrightment, N. N, 263 ; designment, 926 ; 
divorcement, 197 ; justment, 82. 

8. Nouns in -ship. Babyship, 213; dukeship, 266; kingship, 
213; queenship, 88 ; saintship, 498. 

9. Feminines in -ess. Disposeress, 718; neatherdess, 986; 
rectress, 1082; spartaness, 142. Cf. also poetress, 265. 

10. Nouns compounded with fore-. Foreleader, 979 ; foreshows, 
124; foresounds, 319. 

11. Adjectives compounded with un-. Undreadful, 323; un- 
smooth, 571 ; N. N, 137 ; unsober, 592; unsoft, 748. 

Such examples as these show a freedom in the hand- 
ling of material that is practically an artistic character- 
istic. 

The subject of new word formations is one which has 
some rather curious by-paths. There are a few words in 
Herrick's poetry which seem to illustrate what is com- 
monly known as contamination. In To Live Merrily and 
to Trust to Good Verses (201) we find the curious word 
imtnensive: — 

" Then this immensive cup 
Of aromatic wine, 
Catullus, I quaff up 

To that terce muse of thine." 



INTRODUCTION. lxi 

And again in 687 we have the expression "this immen- 
sive sphere." 
t Such words occur in conversation not so infrequently 
as one might think : the speaker has two ideas or two 
words in his mind, and mingles them in his expression 
into one. But in literature they are more rare. Such is 
the word slanti?idicular, sometimes to be heard in Amer- 
ica, and to be found in Martin Chuzzlewit. Such the 
word eloquential, which I have heard used in conversa- 
tion for eloquent, and consequential. Such" the word with- 
strain, which I have seen in writing to express withstand 
and restrain. Such a word isfrowl, such quid. They are 
used once on the spur of the moment, and if noticed are 
corrected. For other examples see Carroll, Through the 
Looking-glass, pp. 126, 128; Paul, Principien der Sprach- 
geschichte, chap, viii, §§ 242-245 ; and Wheeler, Analogy, 
and its Scope in Lafiguage, p. 8. 

Immensive seems to have been thrown out by Herrick 
because it sounded like immense and like expansive, both 
of which ideas he may have had in mind. Zo?iulet (114), 
although properly enough formed as a double diminutive 
from zone, is used with a distinct reminiscence of the 
meaning of amulet. So in shepharling (fern.), 52336, he 
may have had shepherdess and darling, although shep- 
hardling, 2 I2 , is one of Herrick's favorite diminutives. In 
the version of 283 in the Harleian MS., 6917 (printed 
by Mr. Pollard, I, 291) we find in st. 16 [9] "the 
fragrous bride." It was changed in the Hesperides to 
fragrafit. But the first word has the effect of odoroics as 
well as of fragrant. 

Such words as these, although they appear at first 
merely whimsical, are yet of a certain philological value. 
They may have been used consciously, in which case 
they indicate hardly more than ingenuity on the part of 



lxii INTR OD UC TION. 

the writer, and flexibility on the part of the language. 
But they may have been used unconsciously; in which 
case we see the poet with his mind absorbed in his idea, 
striking out, as it were, a new, unifying, and meaningful 
expression. 

Another characteristic of the English of Herrick's day, 
— or at least of a great part of the published English, — 
is also distinctly marked in his poetry, namely, the use 
of words borrowed from the Latin in the Latin sense. 

The importation of Latin words into English was be- 
gun systematically about one hundred years before Her- 
rick's time by Sir Thomas Elyot. Although the principle 
was strongly opposed by Sir John Cheke and others, yet 
there were not a few writers in the sixteenth century who 
adopted the idea, so that by 1600 " inkhorn terms," as 
they had been called by Wilson, were by no means un- 
common. Bacon's work abounds in them, and after 
Bacon, Jeremy Taylor, Sir Thomas Browne and Milton. 
Of these borrowings many have been retained, usually 
with a change of meaning, commonly in the direction of 
tropical signification. " He had a star to illustrate his 
birth," says Jeremy Taylor. " Coming into an inn," says 
Lord Herbert of Cherbury, " I found my fame had pre- 
vented my coming thither." "On the other side, I?ice?ised 
with indignation Satan stood Unterrified," says Milton. 
"The contempt of death from corporal animosity" says 
Sir Thomas Browne. " After a few minutes' refreshment 
[they] deter??ii?ie in loathing," says South. 

Examples of this very common practice may be found 
in Herrick also, of which the following are a number: 
candid, 445, 900 ; circumstants, 197 ; continent, 506, 
742 ; convinces, 197 ; cunctation, 746, 922 ; determine, 
577 ; effused, 636 ; errs, 83 ; errors, 444; instant, 319; 
indignation, 871 ; lations, 133 ; lautitious, 785 ; mel, 370 ; 



INTRODUCTION. lxiii 

perspire, 644; reiterate, 1030; regredience, 658; resi- 
dent, 521 ; retorted, 201 ; transpire, 375, 577. 

These are not so different from the examples that 
might be quoted from contemporaries. They are, how- 
ever, perhaps worth noting because Herrick was not a 
learned writer like Jeremy Taylor, Sir Thomas Browne, 
or Milton. Other lyrists of his day, Herbert, Crashaw, 
Suckling, are hardly so Latinized in diction. 



VI. HERRICK THE POET. 

So much for various things of interest from various 
points of view concerning Herrick's poetry. I hope that 
something has been said which will resolve questions 
which may come up in reading the selections which fol- 
low ; I hope, too, that such information as there may be 
will in no wise divert attention from the real sources of 
delight which every lover of poetry will find in the 
Hesperides. For this is the main thing ; information con- 
cerning chronology and language and other such matters 
is of no great moment if we do not really feel the charm 
of our poet, and there will be not a few who know and 
love their Herrick, who really care but little for such 
matters as are apt to occupy the attention of the scholar. 

Herrick is distinctively a poet from whom to receive 
pleasure. He is not necessarily to be studied ; he is to 
be enjoyed. Doubtless many who love his verses will be 
led on by an honorable curiosity to desire to know this 
and that concerning the man and his work. But the 
poetic enjoyment is the main thing. Herrick is a very 
individual poet. He has something about him which 
lifts him out of tbe crowd of Jacobean and Caroline 



Ixiv INTRODUCTION. 

lyrists, such as Carew and Suckling, nor do we, think of 
him as on precisely the same level as his predecessors the 
Elizabethans. His poems have a certain air of distinction. 
Many of them are trivial enough, doubtless, but they are 
never quite commonplace. Some of them are coarse, but 
he is rarely vulgar. It is hard precisely to define his 
quality, but I think Mr. Palgrave has come the nearest to 
it. Hard to define, it may be, but not I think hard to feel. 

True, Herrick is not to be called a poet of the first 
order. He has no part of that spiritual insight which 
perceives axiomatic reality in what to the ordinary mind 
was a blank range of circumstances. His work does not 
inspire and uplift, save as the work of any artist inspires 
and uplifts, not by any particular enunciations, but by its 
special quality of absolute expression. He deals with 
simple matters in a very simple way, — it is his perfection 
of lyric expression that has made so many of his poems 
masterpieces. 

Mr. Coventry Patmore, in speaking of the intellect and 
imagination of a recent poet, calls Herrick a "splendid 
insect." * It will probably be admitted that Herrick is 
not remarkable for his powerful intellect nor for his 
quickening imagination. Perhaps the poet's lovers will 
not so willingly incline to think of him as a splendid 
insect. Doubtless he has little enough in common with 
certain long-legged fliers of gaudy spottings and streak- 
ings, nor with those magnificent but amorphous-looking 
beetles with antler mandibles, nor yet with the venomous 
and slim-waisted varieties with which we have sometimes 
come in contact. But an entomologist might see much 
resemblance to the Phaneus carnifex, for instance, which 
burrs about among the South American flowers in subdued 
lustre of green and ruddy gold, whose iridescence comes 

1 Religio Poetce, p. 20;:. 



INTRODUCTION. lxv 

not from any superficial pigment but from the very nature 
of his being. 

And yet I think we are better off with no figure of 
speech between ourselves and the poet. Whether he be 
the riotous young fellow in London, or the country vicar 
in his first enthusiasm for the lovely things around him, 
or in the more sober days of his later life he always has 
for us the distinctive character of the artist, his own 
power of feeling and his own innate discrimination, and 
his own peculiar process of distilling from the great 
mixture of impressions that would seem common to all, 
the drops of clear quintessence, aureate and fragrant. 



VII. BIBLIOGRAPHY. 

Herrick's poems were originally published in 1648, just 
before the execution of Charles I. Then came the Com- 
monwealth, the Restoration, and the Eighteenth Century, 
during all which time no second edition was called for ; 
and indeed, so far as we can judge, the first edition was 
not much read. Not till almost the beginning of the 
nineteenth century did the poet begin to feel the first 
glow of that immortality he had so often promised him- 
self. Those were the charming days when our older lit- 
erature was in a sense an untrodden field, when one could 
turn to the Elizabethans and to Chaucer with the fresh 
excitement of a new discoverer. As far as Herrick was 
concerned, Sylvanus Urban began the revival in 1796 
and 1797, followed in 1804 by Nathan Drake in his Lit- 
erary Hours, and since that day we have had a baker's 
dozen of " Complete Works," not to speak of the volumes 
of selections, 



Ix vi INTR OD UC TION. 

The following list gives all the editions of Herrick's 
complete works and the most important volumes of selec- 
tions. It was made at the British Museum, and, having 
compared it with Dr. Grosart's (I, vii-xi), I hope that it 
is tolerably complete and correct. Besides the editions 
of his works there is not much Herrick literature, and 
what there is is chiefly periodical, and so may be easily 
found in Poole's Index. A few remarks on the chief arti- 
cles are added. 

[Editions of complete works, even if expurgated, are numbered 
i, 2, 3, etc. Volumes of selections are marked A, B, C, etc. I have 
not thought it necessary in all cases to give the complete title.] 

i. Hesperides: or, The Works both Humane and Divine 
of Robert Herrick, Esq. Ovid, Effugient avidos Car- 
mina nostra Rogos. London. Printed for John Wil- 
liams and Francis Eglesfield. 1648. 

This is the original edition. It includes both the Hesperides 
and the Noble Numbers, the latter with a separate title-page, 
dated 1647, and separate pagination. 

A. Select Poems from the Hesperides : with remarks by 
J. Nott. 8vo. Bristol, 18 10. 

This is the first result of the reawakened interest in Herrick, 
and the means of much of the subsequent interest. 

2. The Works of Robert Herrick. Edited with a Bio- 
graphical Notice by T. Maitland. 2 vols., 8vo. Edin- 
burgh, 1823. 

B. Selections from the Hesperides, etc., by Charles 
Short. London, 1839. 

3. Hesperides, or Works both Human and Divine of 
Robert Herrick. Edited by H. G. Clarke. 2 vols., 
i6mo. London, 1844. 

Issued in Clarke's Cabinet Series. 



INTRODUCTION. lxvii 

4. Hesperides, or Works both Human and Divine, etc. 
With a Memoir by S. W. Singer. 8vo. London, 
1846. 

Published by Pickering. It is practically the same as 2. 

C. Selections from Herrick for Translation into Latin 
Verse by A. J. Macleane. i6mo. London, 1848. 

5, 6. Dr. Grosart notes that "other complete editions 

appeared in 1850 and 1852 — each in two volumes." 
But these I have not myself seen. 

7. Hesperides ; or, the Works both Humane and 
Divine of Robert Herrick, Esq. 2 vols., 8vo. Boston, 
1856. 

This is Little and Brown's revision of Pickering (4). 

8. The Poetical Works of Robert Herrick. With a Bio- 
graphical Memoir by E. Walford. 8vo. London, 

i859. 

9. Hesperides: Poems and other Remains of Robert Her- 
rick, now first collected. Edited by W. C. Hazlitt. 
2 vols. London, ii 



Here were first collected a number of poems by Herrick which 
did not appear in the Hesperides or Noble Numbers. Hazlitt 
was the first editor to get much beyond what had been done by 
Maitland and Nott. 

10. The Complete Poems of Robert Herrick. Edited 
by Alexander B. Grosart, D.D. 3 vols., 8vo. London, 
1876. 

This edition contains an elaborate " Memorial Introduction," 
a literatim text, copious Notes, and a " Glossorial Index." It 
has the merits and faults of most of Dr. Grosart's work. No 
student of Herrick can afford to neglect it, and every student 
who uses it will find a good deal to disagree with and a good 
deal that will annoy him. Dr. Grosart's work is not distin- 
guished by scholarly accuracy, or by critical insight. But his 



Ixviii INTR OD UC TION. 

intimate familiarity with the literature of the time, his untiring 
diligence, and his warm devotion to his subject have made his 
work of great value. In spite of all objections his edition is the 
standard. 

D. Favorite Poems by Robert Herrick. 321110. Boston, 

1877. 

This contains sixty-six of the best-known poems. 

E. Chrysomela. A Selection from the Lyrical Poems 
of Robert Herrick, arranged with notes by Francis 
Turner Palgrave. i6mo. London, 1877. 

One of the Golden Treasury Series. Mr. Palgrave's gift at 
making selections is remarkable and well known. The intro- 
duction is far and away the best criticism on Herrick that has 
been written. " Herrick," says Mr. Palgrave, " is the best com- 
mentator on Herrick." This is true so far as the poems them- 
selves are concerned, but whoever neglects Mr. Palgrave's com- 
ment will lose what in its own way is equally good. He considers 
chiefly the relation of Herrick to the men of letters of his own 
day and of antiquity, and thus comes to his particular charac- 
teristics. 

F. Selections, etc. With Illustrations by E. A. Abbey, 
and a Memoir by Austin Dobson. 4to. New York, 
1882, and London, 1883. 

Both memoir and illustrations are well known to Herrick 
lovers. 

11. Hesperides: or Works both Human and Divine of 
Robert Herrick. With an Introduction by Henry 
Morley. 8vo. London, 1883. 

This is the volume in Morley's Universal Library. It gives a 
text (with slight expurgation) and puts into the few pages of in- 
troduction a great deal that is good. 

G. Herrick. Edited by H. P. Home in the Canterbury 
Poets. i6mo. London, 1887. 

The Introduction and Notes have a good many independent 
and interesting remarks and conjectures. 



INTR OD UC TION. \ x [ x 

12. The Hesperides and Noble Numbers. Edited by 
Alfred Pollard, with a Preface by A. C. Swinburne, 
sm. 8vo. London and New York, 189 1. 

This edition has a Life by Mr. Pollard and Notes, which have 
been, as will be seen, of the greatest assistance to me. Mr. 
Swinburne's preface is slight, but has a number of suggestive 
remarks. Mr. Pollard's work is the most thorough that has 
been done on the subject. His edition does not, of course, in- 
clude all that is of value in Dr. Grosart's, but he goes beyond 
Grosart in several directions, and is far more scholarly and accu- 
rate. The chief points illustrated by his Life and Notes are 
Herrick's friends, Herrick's reminiscences of the classics, and 
the MS. versions of Herrick's poetry. The poems are here for 
the first time numbered, and the numbering has been followed 
in the present selection, although I have been unable to find what 
poems Mr. Pollard would number 402 and 448, " This number- 
ing," he says in the editor's note, " renders it possible to print the 
Epigrams [v. p. xliv foil.], which successive editors have joined 
in deploring, in a detachable appendix, their place in the original 
being indicated by the numeration." In the copy which I have 
used (and I suppose in the rest of the edition) the Appendix is 
not only detachable but detached, and the text is as a conse- 
quence expurgated. In this particular it differs somewhat from 
11. Mr. Morley omitted whatever he considered licentious, and 
retained much that most people would consider nasty. Mr. 
Pollard seems to have omitted what was nasty, and has retained 
a good deal that is licentious. 

Mr. Pollard gives the idea of one confined for space. It is a 
pity that he could not have taken all the room that he desired, 
for he would then have made what might well stand as the final 
edition of Herrick. As it is, his edition is, within its limits, far 
more useful than Dr. Grosart's. 

13. The poetical works of Robert Herrick. Edited 
by George Saintsbury. 2 vols., i2mo. London, 
1893. 

This is one of the " Aldine Poets." It presents a good text 
and the notes have been minimised. 



lxx INTRODUCTION. 

The chief work on Herrick has been done by his edi- 
tors. In addition, however, to the introductions to the 
editions mentioned, the following articles may be noted: 

Early articles by " Sylvanus Urban" and Nathan Drake, 
as above. 

In the Quarterly Review for August, 1810, and the 
Retrospective Review for August, 1822, are interesting 
articles, the first containing a good deal of information 
about Herrick's Devonshire surroundings, and the latter 
distinguished by the taste of its selections and its critical 
remarks. 

Edmund Gosse: Robert Herrick. In Seventeenth Cen- 
tury Studies, 2d ed., London, 1885. With this it is 
well to read Mr. Gosse's Introduction to the selections 
from Herrick in Ward's English Poets (4 vols., 8vo, Lon- 
don and New York, 1881), vol. ii, pp. 124-129. I have 
had occasion to differ from some of Mr. Gosse's conclu- 
sions, but the essay is one of the best things on the sub- 
ject, and should certainly be read by any one interested. 
It was first published in the Cornhill Magazine. 

By the present editor: Die chronologische Anordnung 
der Dichtungen Robert Herricks. Halle a. S., 1892. This 
is a study made with a view of ascertaining the principles 
that must obtain in any attempt to draw inferences from 
Herrick's poetry concerning Herrick's life. 

Alfred Pollard: The Friends of Herrick. Macmillan's 
Magazine, August, 1893. Presents more fully than it 
was possible in his edition the results of Mr. Pollard's 
studies on the persons alluded to in the Hesperides. In 
this direction Mr. Pollard is chief authority, and his work 
cannot be neglected. 



A SELECTION 

FROM 

HESPERIDES: 

THE WORKS BOTH HUMAN AND DIVINE 

OF 

ROBERT HERRICK. 



To the Most Illustrious and Most Hopeful Prince, 

Charles, 

Prince of Wales. 

Well may my book come forth like public day, 
When such a light as You are leads the way, 
Who are my work's creator and alone 
The flame of it and the expansion. 
And look how all those heavenly lamps acquire 
Light from the sun, that inexhausted fire : 
So all my morn and evening stars from You 
Have their existence, and their influence too. 
Full is my book of glories ; but all these 
By You become immortal substances. 



HESPERIDES. 



i. THE ARGUMENT OF HIS BOOK. 

I sing of brooks, of blossoms, birds and bowers, 

Of April, May, of June, and July-flowers ; 

I sing of may-poles, hock-carts, wassails, wakes, 

Of bridegrooms, brides, and of their bridal-cakes; 

I write of youth, of love, and have access 

By these, to sing of cleanly wantonness ; 

I sing of dews, of rains, and piece by piece, 

Of balm, of oil, of spice, and amber-greece ; 

I sing of times trans-shifting ; and I write 

How roses first came red, and lilies white. 

I write of groves, of twilights, and I sing 

The court of Mab and of the Fairie King. 

I write of Hell ; I sing, and ever shall, 

Of Heaven, and hope to have it after all. 

2. TO HIS MUSE. 

Whither, mad maiden, wilt thou roam ? 
Far safer 'twere to stay at home ; 
Where thou may'st sit, and piping please 
The poor and private cottages, 
Since coats and hamlets best agree 
With this thy meaner minstrelsy. 
There with the reed thou may'st express 
The shepherd's fleecy happiness, 
And with thy Eclogues intermix 
Some smooth and harmless Bucolics. 



HESPERIDES. 

There, on a hillock, thou may'st sing 
Unto a handsome shepherdling, 
Or to a girl, that keeps the neat, 
With breath more sweet than violet. 
There, there, perhaps, such lines as these J 5 

May take the simple villages. 
But for the court, the country wit 
Is despicable unto it. 
Stay then at home, and do not go 
Or fly abroad to seek for woe. 2 ° 

Contempts in courts and cities dwell ; 
No critic haunts the poor man's cell, 
Where thou may'st hear thine own lines read, 
By no one tongue there censured. 
That man's unwise will search for ill, 2 5 

And may prevent it sitting still. 
• 

3. TO HIS BOOK. 

While thou didst keep thy candor undefiPd 

Dearly I lov'd thee, as my first-born child ; 

But when I saw thee wantonly to roam 

From house to house, and never stay at home, 

I brake my bonds of love and bade thee go, 5 

Regardless whether well thou sped'st or no. 

On with thy fortunes then, whate'er they be ; 

If good I'll smile, if bad I'll sigh for thee. 

8. WHEN HE WOULD HAVE HIS VERSES READ. 

In sober mornings do not thou rehearse . 

The holy incantation of a verse ; 

But when that men have both well drunk and fed, 

Let my enchantments then be sung or read. 



HESPERIDES. 5 

When laurel spirts i'th' fire, and when the hearth 5 

Smiles to itself, and gilds the roof with mirth ; 

When up the thyrse is rais'd, and when the sound 

Of sacred orgies flies around, around ; 

When the rose reigns, and locks with ointments shine, 

Let rigid Cato read these lines of mine. 10 

12. NO BASHFULNESS IN BEGGING. 

To get thine ends, lay bashfulness aside ; 
Who fears to ask, doth teach to be deny'd. 

14. TO PERILLA. 

Ah, my Perilla ! do'st thou grieve to see 

Me, day by day, to steal away from thee ? 

Age calls me hence, and my grey hairs bid come 

And haste away to mine eternal home ; 

'Twill not be long, Perilla, after this, 5 

That I must give thee the supremest kiss : 

Dead when I am, first cast in salt, and bring 

Part of the cream from that religious spring ; 

With which, Perilla, wash my hands and feet ; 

That done, then wind me in that very sheet 10 

Which wrapt thy smooth limbs, when thou didst implore 

The gods' protection but the night before, 

Follow me weeping to my turf, and there 

Let fall a primrose, and with it a tear : 

Then lastly, let some weekly-strewings be 15 

Devoted to the memory of me ; 

Then shall my ghost not walk about, but keep 

Still in the cool and silent shades of sleep. 



HESPERIDES. 



22. TO ANTHEA. 



If, dear Anthea, my hard fate it be 
To live some few sad howers after thee, 
Thy sacred corse with odors I will burn, 
And with my laurel crown thy golden urn. 
Then holding up there such religious things 
As were (time past) thy holy filletings 
Near to thy reverend pitcher I will fall 
Down dead for grief, and end my woes withal ; 
So three in one small plat of ground shall lie, 
Anthea, Herrick, and his poetry. 



23. THE WEEPING CHERRY. 

I saw a cherry weep, and why ? 

Why wept it ? But for shame 
Because my Julia's lip was by, 

And did out-red the same. 
But, pretty fondling, let not fall 

A tear at all for that 
Which rubies, corals, scarlets, all 

For tincture, wonder at. 

25. THE DIFFERENCE BETWIXT KINGS AND 
SUBJECTS. 

'Twixt kings and subjects there's this mighty odds : 
Subjects are taught by men ; kings, by the gods. 

29. LOVE, WHAT IT IS. 

Love is a circle, that doth restless move 
In the same sweet eternity of love. 



HESPEKIDES. 

32. THE POMANDER BRACELET. 

To me my Julia lately sent 

A bracelet, richly redolent ; 

The beads I kiss'd, but most lov'd her 

That did perfume the pomander. 

35. HIS SAILING FROM JULIA. 

When that day comes, whose evening says I'm gone 

Unto that wat'ry desolation, 

Devoutly to thy closet-gods then pray, 

That my wing'd ship may meet no remora. 

Those deities which circum-walk the seas, 

And look upon our dreadful passages, 

Will from all dangers re-deliver me 

For one drink-offering poured out by thee. 

Mercy and Truth live with thee ! and forbear, 

In my short absence, to unsluice a tear ; 

But yet, for love's sake, let thy lips do this, 

Give my dead picture one engend'ring kiss ; 

Work that to life, and let me ever dwell 

In thy remembrance, Julia. So farewell. 

36. HOW THE WALL-FLOWER CAME FIRST, AND 
WHY SO CALLED. 

Why this flower is now call'd so, 
List', sweet maids, and you shall know. 
Understand, this firstling was 
Once a brisk and bonny lass, 
Kept as close as Danae was ; 
Who a sprightly springall lov'd, 
And to have it fully prov'd, 
Up she got upon a wall, 
Tempting down to slide withal ; 



; HESPERIDES. 

But the silken twist untied, • 10 

So she fell ; and bruis'd, she died. 

Love, in pity of the deed, 

And her loving-luckless speed, 

Turn'd her to this plant, we call 

Now The Flower of the Wall. 15 

39. UPON THE LOSS OF HIS MISTRESSES. 

I have lost, and lately, these 

Many dainty mistresses : 

Stately Julia, prime of all ; 

Sapho next, a principal ; 

Smooth Anthea, for a skin 5 

White and heaven-like crystalline ; 

Sweet Electra, and the choice 

Myrha, for the lute and voice. 

Next, Corinna, for her wit, 

And the graceful use of it ; 10 

With Perilla : all are gone, 

Only Herrick's left alone, 

For to number sorrow by 

Their departures hence, and die. 

47. THE PAROUS; OR, THREE DAINTY DESTINIES. 
THE ARMILET. 

Three lovely sisters working were, 

As they were closely set, 
Of soft and dainty maiden-hair, 

A curious Armilet. 
I, smiling, ask'd them what they did, 5 

Fair destinies all three, 
Who told me they had drawn a thread 

Of life, and 'twas for me. 



HESPERIDES. 

They showed me then how fine 'twas spun : 

And I reply'd thereto, 
I care not now how soon 'tis done, 

Or cut, if cut by you. 

50. TO ROBIN REDBREAST. 

Laid out for dead, let thy last kindness be 
With leaves and moss-work for to cover me ; 
And while the wood-nymphs my cold corpse inter, 
Sing thou my dirge, sweet-warbling chorister. 
For epitaph, in foliage next write this : 
Here, here the tomb of Robin Herrick is ! 

51. DISCONTENTS IN DEVON. 

More discontents I never had, 

Since I was born, than here ; 
Where I have been, and still am sad, 

In this dull Devonshire. 
Yet, justly too, I must confess, 

I ne'er invented such 
Ennobled numbers for the press, 

Than where I loath'd so much. 

53. CHERRY-RIPE. 

Cherry-ripe, ripe, ripe, I cry, 
Full and fair ones ; come and buy ; 
If so be you ask me where 
They do grow? I answer, there, 
Where my Julia's lips do smile ; 
There's the land or cherry-isle, 
Whose plantations fully show 
All the year where cherries grow. 



10 HESPERIDES. 

54. TO HIS MISTRESSES. 

Put up your silks, and piece by piece, 
Give them the scent of amber-greece ; 
And for your breaths, too, let them smell 
Ambrosia-like, or nectarel ; 
While other gums their sweets perspire, 
By your own jewels set on fire. 



55- 



TO ANTHEA. 



Now is the time when all the lights wax dim, 

And thou, Anthea, must withdraw from him 

Who was thy servant. Dearest, bury me 

Under that Holy-oak or Gospel-tree ; 

Where, though thou see'st not, thou may'st think upon 5 

Me, when thou yearly go'st procession ; 

Or, for mine honor, lay me in that tomb 

In which thy sacred reliques shall have room ; 

For my embalming, sweetest, there will be 

No spices wanting when I'm laid by thee. 10 

57. DREAMS. 

Here we are all by day ; by night w'are hurl'd 
By dreams, each one into a sev'ral world. 

58. AMBITION. 

In man, ambition is the common'st thing ; 
Each one by nature loves to be a king. 

59. HIS REQUEST TO JULIA. 

Julia, if I chance to die 
Ere I print my poetry, 



HESPERIDES. 11 

I most humbly thee desire 

To commit it to the fire ; 

Better 'twere my book were dead, 5 

Than to live not perfected. 

67. UPON JULIA'S VOICE. 

So smooth, so sweet, so silv'ry is thy voice, 
As, could they hear, the damn'd would make no noise, 
But listen to thee, walking in thy chamber, 
Melting melodious words to lutes of amber. 

70. THE SUCCESSION OF THE FOUR SWEET 
MONTHS. 

First, April, she with mellow showers 

Opens the way for early flowers ; 

Then after her comes smiling May, 

In a more rich and sweet array ; 

Next enters June, and brings us more 5 

Gems than those two that went before ; 

Then, lastly, July comes, and she 

More wealth brings in than all those three. 

77. TO THE KING, UPON HIS COMING WITH HIS 
ARMY INTO THE WEST. 

Welcome, most welcome to our vows and us, 

Most great and universal genius ! 

The drooping West, which hitherto has stood 

As one, in long-lamented widowhood, 

Looks like a bride now, or a bed of flowers, 5 

Newly refreshed both by the sun and showers. 

War, which before was horrid, now appears 

Lovely in you, brave Prince of Cavaliers ! 



12 HESPERIDES. 

A deal of courage in each bosom springs 

By your access, O you the best of Kings ! 10 

Ride on with all white omens, so that where 

Your standard's up, we fix a conquest there. 

82. TO THE REVEREND SHADE OF HIS RELIGIOUS 
FATHER. 

That for seven lustres I did never come 

To do the rites to thy religious tomb ; 

That neither hair was cut, or true tears shed 

By me o'er thee, as justments to the dead ; 

Forgive, forgive me ; since I did not know 5 

Whether thy bones had here their rest or no. 

But now 'tis known, behold, behold, I bring 

Unto thy ghost th' effused offering ; 

And look, what smallage, nightshade, cypress, yew, 

Unto the shades have been, or now are due, 10 

Here I devote ; and something more than so, 

I come to pay a debt of birth I owe. 

Thou gav'st me life, but mortal ; for that one 

Favour I'll make full satisfaction ; 

For my life mortal, rise from out thy hearse, 15 

And take a life immortal from my verse. 

83. DELIGHT IN DISORDER. 

A sweet disorder in the dress 

Kindles in clothes a wantonness ; 

A lawn about the shoulders thrown 

Into a fine distraction ; 

An erring lace, which here and there 5 

Enthrals the crimson stomacher ; 

A cuff neglectful, and thereby 

Ribbands to flow confusedly ; 



IIESPERIDES. 13 

A winning wave, deserving note, 

In the tempestuous petticoat ; IO 

A careless shoe-string, in whose tie 

I see a wild civility ; 

Do more bewitch me, than when art 

Is too precise in every part. 

86. TO DEAN-BOURN, A RUDE RIVER IN DEVON, BY 
WHICH SOMETIMES HE LIVED. 

Dean-bourn, farewell ; I never look to see 

Dean or thy wat'ry incivility ; 

Thy rocky bottom, that doth tear thy streams 

And makes them frantic ev'n to all extremes, 

To my content I never should behold, 5 

Were thy streams silver, or thy rocks all gold. 

Rocky thou art ; and rocky we discover 

Thy men, and rocky are thy ways all over. 

O men, O manners ; there, and ever known 

To be a rocky generation ! J o 

A people currish, churlish as the seas, 

And rude almost as rudest salvages. 

With whom I did, and may re-sojourn when 

Rocks turn to rivers, rivers turn to men. 

88. TO JULIA. 

How rich and pleasing thou, my Julia, art 

In each thy dainty and peculiar part ! 

First, for thy queenship, on thy head is set 

Of flowers a sweet commingled coronet ; 

About thy neck a carcanet is bound, 5 

Made of the ruby, pearl, and diamond ; 

A golden ring, that shines upon thy thumb ; 

About thy wrist the rich Dardanium ; 



14 HESPERIDES. 

Between thy breasts, than down of swans more white, 
There plays the sapphire with the chrysolite. 
No part besides must of thyself be known, 
But by the topaz, opal, chalcedon. 

89. TO LAURELS. 

A funeral stone 
Or verse, I covet none ; 
But only crave 
Of you that I may have 
A sacred laurel springing from my grave, 
Which being seen 
Blest with perpetual green, 

May grow to be 
Not so much calPd a tree 
As the eternal monument of me. 

90. HIS CAVALIER. 
Give me that man that dares bestride 
The active sea-horse, and with pride 
Through that huge field of waters ride: 

Who, with his looks, too, can appease 
The ruffling winds and raging seas, 
In midst of all their outrages : 

This, this a virtuous man can do, 
Sail against rocks, and split them too ; 
Ay, and a world of pikes pass through. 

97. DUTY TO TYRANTS. 

Good princes must be pray'd for ; for the bad 
They must be borne with, and in rev'rence had. 
Do they first pill thee, next pluck off thy skin ? 
Good children kiss the rods that punish sin. 



HESPERIDES. 15 

Touch not the tyrant, let the gods alone 5 

To strike him dead that but usurps a throne. 

1 06. A COUNTRY LIFE : TO HIS BROTHER, 
M. THO: HERRICK. 

Thrice, and above, bless'd, my soul's half, art thou, 

In thy both last and better vow. 
Could'st leave the city, for exchange, to see 

The country's sweet simplicity, 
And it to know and practise, with intent 5 

To grow the sooner innocent 
By studying to know virtue, and to aim 

More at her nature than - her name. 
The last is but the least, the first doth tell 

Ways less to live than to live well ; 10 

And both are known to thee, who now can'st live, 

Led by thy conscience, to give 
Justice to soon-pleas'd nature, and to show 

Wisdom and she together go, 
And keep one centre; this with that conspires 15 

To teach man to confine desires, 
And know that riches have their proper stint 

In the contented mind, not mint ; 
And can'st instruct that those who have the itch 

Of craving more are never rich. 20 

These things thou know'st to th' height, and dost prevent 

That plague, because thou art content 
With that Heav'n gave thee with a wary hand 

(More blessed in thy brass than land) 
To keep cheap Nature even and upright, 25 

To cool, not cocker appetite. 
Thus thou canst tersely live to satisfy 

The belly chiefly, not the eye ; 



16 HESPERIDES. 

Keeping the barking stomach wisely quiet, 

Less with a neat than needful diet. 30 

But that which most makes sweet thy country life 

Is the fruition of a wife, 
Whom, stars consenting with thy fate, thou hast 

Got not so beautiful as chaste ; 
By whose warm side thou dost securely sleep, 35 

While love the sentinel doth keep, 
With those deeds done by day which ne'er affright 

Thy silken slumbers in the night. 
Nor has the darkness power to usher in 

Fear to those sheets that know no sin. 40 

The damask'd meadows and the pebbly streams 

Sweeten and make soft your dreams ; 
The purling springs, groves, birds, and well weav'd bowers, 45 

With fields enamelled with flowers, 
Present their shapes, while fantasy discloses 

Millions of lilies mix'd with roses. 
Then dream ye hear the lamb by many a bleat 

Woo'd to come suck the milky teat, 50 

While Faunus in the vision comes to keep 

From rav'ning wolves the fleecy sheep, 
With thousand such enchanting dreams that meet 

To make sleep not so sound as sweet ; 
Nor can these figures so thy rest endear, 55 

As not to rise when Chanticleer 
Warns the last watch, but with the dawn dost rise 

To work, but first to sacrifice ; 
Making thy peace with Heav'n for some late fault, 

With holy-meal and spirting salt ; 60 

Which done, thy painful thumb this sentence tells us, 

Jove for our labor all things sells us. 
Nor are thy daily and devout affairs, 

Attended with those desp'rate cares 



HESPERIDES. 17 

Th' industrious merchant has, who for to find 65 

Gold, runneth to the Western Inde, 
And back again, tortur'd with fears, doth fly, 

Untaught to suffer poverty. 
But thou at home, bless'd with securest ease, 

Sitt'st, and believ'st that there be seas 7° 

And wat'ry dangers, while thy whiter hap 

But sees these things within thy map ; 
And viewing them with a more safe survey 

Mak'st easy fear unto thee say, 
A heart thrice walVd with oak and brass that man 75 

Had, first durst plough the ocean. 
But thou at home, without or tide or gale, 

Canst in thy map securely sail, 
Seeing those painted countries, and so guess 

By those fine shades their substances ; 80 

And, from thy compass taking small advice, 

Buy'st travel at the lowest price. 
Nor are thine ears so deaf but thou canst hear, 

Far more with wonder than with fear, 
Fame tell of states, of countries, courts, and kings, 85 

And believe there be such things, 
When of these truths thy happier knowledge lies 

More in thine ears than in thine eyes. 
And when thou hear'st by too true report, 

Vice rules the most or all at court, 9° 

Thy pious wishes are, though thou not there, 

Virtue had, and mov'd her sphere. 
But thou liv'st fearless ; and thy face ne'er shows 

Fortune when she comes or goes, 
But, with thy equal thoughts, prepar'd dost stand 95 

To take her by the either hand ; 
Nor car'st which comes the first, the foul or fair. 

A wise man ev'ry way lies square; 



IS HESPERIDES. 

And like a surly oak with storms perplex'd, 

Grows still the stronger, strongly vex'd. ioo 

Be so, bold spirit ; stand centre-like unmov'd ; 

And be not only thought but prov'd 
To be what I report thee, and inure 

Thyself, if want comes, to endure. 
And so thou dost ; for thy desires are 105 

Confin'd to live with private Lar, 
Nor curious whether appetite be fed 

Or with the first or second bread. 
Who keep'st no proud mouth for delicious cates 

(Hunger makes coarse meats delicates) no 

Canst, and unurg'd, forsake that larded fare, 

Which art, not nature makes so rare ; 
To taste boil'd nettles, coleworts, beets, and eat 

These and sour herbs as dainty meat, 
While soft opinion makes thy Genius say, 115 

Content makes all ambrosia. 
Nor is it that thou keep'st this stricter size 

So much for want as exercise ; 
To numb the sense of dearth, which, should sin haste it, 

Thou might'st but only see 't, not taste it. 120 

Yet can thy humble roof maintain a quire 

Of singing crickets by thy fire ; 
And the brisk mouse may feast herself with crumbs, 

Till that the green-ey'd kitling comes ; 
Then to her cabin, bless'd she can escape 125 

The sudden danger of a rape. 
And thus thy little well-kept stock doth prove, 

Wealth cannot make a life, but love. 
Nor art thou so close-handed, but can'st spend 

(Counsel concurring with the end) 130 

As well as spare ; still conning o'er this theme, 

To shun the first and last extreme ; 



HESPERIDES. 19 

Ordaining that thy small stock find no breach, 

Or to exceed thy tether's reach, 
But to live round, and close, and wisely true x 35 

To thine own self, and known to few. 
Thus let thy rural sanctuary be 

Elisium to thy wife and thee ; 
There to disport yourselves with golden measure : 

For seldom use commends the pleasure. T 4° 

Live, and live bless'd, thrice happy pair ; let breath, 

But lost to one, be th'other's death. 
And as there is one love, one faith, one troth, 

Be so one death, one grave to both. 
Till when, in such assurance, live ye may, 145 

Nor fear or wish your dying day. 

110. UPON FONE, A SCHOOLMASTER. EPIG. 

Fone says, those mighty whiskers he does wear 
Are twigs of birch and willow growing there ; 
If so, we'll think, too, when he does condemm 
Boys to the lash, that he does whip with them. 

in. A LYRIC TO MIRTH. 

While the milder fates consent, 

Let's enjoy our merriment ; 

Drink, and dance, and pipe, and play, 

Kiss our dollies night and day ; 

Crown'd with clusters of the vine, 5 

Let us sit and quaff our wine ; 

Call on Bacchus, chant his praise, 

Shake the thyrse and bite the bays ; 

Rouse Anacreon from the dead, 

And return him drunk to bed ; 10 



20 HESPERIDES. 

Sing o'er Horace ; for ere long 
Death will come and mar the song ; 
Then shall Wilson and Gotiere 
Never sing or play more here. 

114. UPON JULIA'S RIBBAND. 

As shows the air when with a rainbow grac'd, 
So smiles that ribband 'bout my Julia's waist ; 

Or like Nay, 'tis that zonulet of love 

Wherein all pleasures of the world are wove. 

123. THE TEAR SENT TO HER FROM STAINES. 
[This poem and 122 are addressed to Mrs. Dorothy Keneday.] 

Glide, gentle streams, and bear 
Along with you my tear 

To that coy girl, 

Who smiles yet slays 

Me with delays, 5 

And strings my tears as pearl. 

See, see, she's yonder set, 
Making a carcanet 

Of maiden flowers ! 

There, there present 10 

This orient 
And pendent pearl of ours. 

Then say I've sent one more 
Gem to enrich her store ; 

And that is all 15 

Which I can send, 

Or vainly spend, 
For tears no more will fall. 



HESPERIDES. 21 

Nor will I seek supply 

Of them, the spring's once dry ; 20 

But I'll devise, 

Among the rest, 

A way that's best 
How I may save mine eyes. 

Yet say, should she condemn 25 

Me to surrender them ; 

Then say, my part 

Must be to weep 

Out them, to keep 
A poor, yet loving heart. 30 

Say, too, she would have this ; 
She shall. Then my hope is, 

That when I'm poor, 

And nothing have 

To send or save, 35 

I'm sure she'll ask no more. 



128. HIS FAREWELL TO SACK. 

Farewell, thou thing, time past so known, so dear 

To me, as blood to life and spirit. Near, 

Nay, thou more near than kindred, friend, man, wife, 

Male to the female, soul to body. Life 

To quick action, or the warm soft side 

Of the resigning, yet resisting bride. 

These, and a thousand sweets, could never be 

So near or dear as thou wast once to me. 

O, thou the drink of gods and angels ! wine 

That scatter'st spirit and lust ; whose purest shine, 

More radiant than the summer's sunbeams shows, 

Each way illustrious, brave, and like to those 



22 HESPERIDES. 

Comets we see by night, whose shagg'd portents 15 

Foretell the coming of some dire events ; 

Or some full flame, which with a pride aspires, 

Throwing about his wild and active fires. 

'Tis thou, above nectar, O divinest soul ! 

Eternal in thyself, that canst control 20 

That which subverts whole Nature, grief and care, 

Vexation of the mind, and damn'd despair. 

'Tis thou alone, who, with thy mystic fan, 

Work'st more than Wisdom, Art, or Nature can, 

To rouse the sacred madness, and awake 25 

The frost-bound blood and spirits, and to make 

Them frantic with thy raptures, flashing through 

The soul like lightning, and as active too. 

'Tis not Apollo can, or those thrice three 

Castalian sisters sing, if wanting thee. 3° 

Horace, Anacreon, both had lost their fame, 

Hadst thou not fill'd them with thy fire and flame. 

Phcebean splendor ! and thou, Thespian spring ! 

Of which sweet swans must drink before they sing 

Their true-pac'd numbers and their holy lays, 35 

Which makes them worthy cedar and the bays. 

But why, why longer do I gaze upon 

Thee with the eye of admiration? 

Since I must leave thee, and enforc'd must say, 

To all thy witching beauties, Go, away ! 4° 

But if thy whimp'ring looks do ask me why? 

Then know that Nature bids thee go, not I. 

'Tis her erroneous self has made a brain 

Uncapable of such a sovereign, 

As is thy powerful self. Prithee, not smile, 45 

Or smile more inly, lest thy looks beguile 

My vows denounc'd in zeal, which thus much show thee 

That I have sworn but by thy looks to know thee. 



HESPERIDES. 23 

Let others drink thee freely, and desire 

Thee and their lips espous'd, while I admire 50 

And love thee, but not taste thee. Let my muse 

Fail of thy former helps, and only use 

Her inadult'rate strength ; what's done by me 

Hereafter, shall smell of the lamp, not thee. 

197. THE WELCOME TO SACK. 

So soft streams meet, so springs with gladder smiles 

Meet after long divorcement by the isles, 

When love, the child of likeness, urgeth on 

Their crystal natures to an union ; 

So meet stol'n kisses, when the moony nights 5 

Call forth fierce lovers to their wish'd delights ; 

So kings and queens meet, when desire convinces 

All thoughts but such as aim at getting princes, 

As I meet thee. Soul of my life and fame ! 

Eternal lamp of love ! whose radiant flame I0 

Outglares the heav'ns' Osiris ; and thy gleams 

Outshine the splendor of his midday beams. 

Welcome, O welcome, my illustrious spouse ; 

Welcome as are the ends unto my vows. 

Ay, far more welcome than the happy soil 15 

The sea-scourg'd merchant, after all his toil, 

Salutes with tears of joy, when fires betray 

The smoky chimneys of his Ithaca. 

Where hast thou been so long from my embraces, 

Poor pitied exile ? Tell me, did thy graces 20 

Fly discontented hence, and for a time 

Did rather choose to bless another clime ? 

Or went'st thou to this end, the more to move me 

By thy short absence to desire and love thee ? 

Why frowns my sweet ? Why won't my saint confer 25 

Favors on me, her fierce idolater ? 



24 HESPERIDES. 

Why are those looks, those looks the which have been 

Time past so fragrant, sickly now drawn in 

Like a dull twilight ? Tell me, and the fault 

I'll expiate with sulphur, hair, and salt, 30 

And with the crystal humor of the spring, 

Purge hence the guilt, and kill this quarrelling. 

Wo't thou not smile, or tell me what's amiss ? 

Have I been cold to hug thee, too remiss, 

Too temp'rate in embracing ? Tell me, has desire 35 

To thee-ward died i' th' embers, and no fire 

Left in this rak'd-up ash-heap, as a mark 

To testify the glowing of a spark ? 

Have I divorc'd thee only to combine 

In hot adult'ry with another wine ? 4° 

True, I confess I left thee, and appeal 

'Twas done by me, more to confirm my zeal, 

And double my affection on thee ; as do those 

Whose love grows more enflam'd by being foes. 

But to forsake thee ever, could there be 45 

A thought of such like possibility, 

When thou thyself dar'st say, thy isles shall lack 

Grapes, before Herrick leaves Canary sack? 

Thou mak'st me airy, active to be borne, 

Like Iphyclus, upon the tops of corn. 5° 

Thou mak'st me nimble, as the winged hours, 

To dance and caper on the heads of flowers, 

And ride the sunbeams. Can there be a thing 

Under the heavenly Isis, that can bring 

More love unto my life, or can present 55 

My genius with a fuller blandishment ? 

Illustrious idol ! could the Egyptians seek 

Help from the garlic, onion, and the leek, 

And pay no vows to thee ? who wast their best 

God, and far more transcendent than the rest ? 60 



HESPERIDES. 25 

Had Cassius, that weak water-drinker, known 

Thee in thy vine, or had but tasted one 

Small chalice of thy frantic liquor, he 

As the wise Cato, had approv'd of thee. 

Come, come and kiss me ; love and lust commends 

Thee and thy beauties ; kiss, we will be friends 70 

Too strong for fate to break us. Look upon 

Me with that full pride of complexion, 

As queens meet queens ; or come thou unto me, 

As Cleopatra came to Anthony, 

When her high carriage did at once present 75 

To the Triumvir love and wonderment. 

Swell up my nerves with spirit ; let my blood 

Run through my veins like to a hasty flood ; 

Fill each part full of fire, active to do 

What thy commanding soul shall put it to ; 80 

And till I turn apostate to thy love, 

Which here I vow to serve, do not remove 

Thy flers from me ; but Apollo's curse 

Blast these-like actions, or a thing that's worse ; 

When these circumstants shall but live to see 85 

The time that I prevaricate from thee, 

Call me the Son of Beer, and then confine 

Me to the tap, the toast, the turf ; let wine 

Ne'er shine upon me, may my numbers all 

Run to a sudden death and funeral. 90 

And last, when thee, dear spouse, I disavow, 

Ne'er may prophetic Daphne crown my brow. 

178. CORINNA'S GOING A-MAYING. 

Get up, get up for shame, the blooming morn 

Upon her wings presents the god unshorn. 
See how Aurora throws her fair 
Fresh-quilted colors through the air ; 



26 HESPERIDES. 

Get up, sweet slug-a-bed, and see 5 

The dew bespangling herb and tree. 

Each flower has wept, and bow'd toward the east, 

Above an hour since, yet you not dress'd, 
Nay ! not so much as out of bed ? 
When all the birds have matins said, 10 

And sung their thankful hymns ; 'tis sin, 
Nay, profanation to keep in, 

Whenas a thousand virgins on this day 

Spring, sooner than the lark, to fetch in May. 

Rise, and put on your foliage, and be seen 15 

To come forth, like the Spring-time, fresh and green, 

And sweet as Flora. Take no care 

For jewels for your gown or hair ; 

Fear not, the leaves will strew 

Gems in abundance upon you ; 20 

Besides, the childhood of the day has kept 
Against you come, some orient pearls unwept. 

Come, and receive them while the light 

Hangs on the dew-locks of the night, 

And Titan on the eastern hill 25 

Retires himself, or else stands still 
Till you come forth. Wash, dress, be brief in praying ; 
Few beads are best, when once we go a-Maying. 

Come, my Corinna, come ; and coming mark 

How each field turns a street, each street a park 3° 

Made green, and trimm'd with trees ; see how 

Devotion gives each house a bough 

Or branch ; each porch, each door, ere this, 

An ark, a tabernacle is, 
Made up of white-thorn neatly enterwove, 35 

As if here were those cooler shades of love. 



HESrEKIDES. 27 

Can such delights be in the street 

And open fields, and we not see't ? 

Come, we'll abroad, and let's obey 

The proclamation made for May, 40 

And sin no more, as we have done, by staying ; 
But, my Corinna, come, let's go a-Maying. 

There's not a budding boy or girl, this day, 
But is got up and gone to bring in May. 

A deal of youth, ere this, is come 45 

Back, and with white-thorn laden home. 

Some have despatch'd their cakes and cream 

Before that we have left to dream : 
And some have wept, and woo'd and plighted troth, 
And chose their priest, ere we can cast off sloth ; 50 

Many a green-gown has been given, 

Many a kiss, both odd and even, 

Many a glance, too, has been sent 

From out the eye, Love's firmament ; 
Many a jest told of the key's betraying 55 

This night, and locks pick'd, yet w'are not a-Maying. 

Come, let us go, while we are in our prime, 
And take the harmless folly of the time. 

We shall grow old apace and die 

Before we know our liberty. 60 

Our life is short, and our days run 

As fast away as does the sun, 
And as a vapor, or a drop of rain 
Once lost, can ne'er be found again ; 

So when or you or I are made 65 

A fable, song, or fleeting shade, 

All love, all liking, all delight 

Lies drown'd with us in endless night. 



28 HESPERIDES. 

Then while time serves, and we are but decaying, 
Come, my Corinna, come, let's go a-Maying. 70 

181. A DIALOGUE BETWIXT HORACE AND LYDIA, 

Translated Anno 1627, and set by 
Mr. Ro: Ramsey. 

Hor. While, Lydia, I was lov'd of thee, 
Nor any was preferr'd 'fore me 
To hug thy whitest neck ; than I, 
The Persian King liv'd not more happily. 

Lyd. While thou no other didst affect, 5 

Nor Chloe was of more respect ; 
Then Lydia, far-famed Lydia, 
I flourish'd more than Roman Ilia. 

Hor. Now Thracian Chloe governs me, 

Skilful i' th' harp and melody ; 10 

For whose affection, Lydia, I, 

So fate spares her, am well content to die. 

Lyd. My heart now set on fire is 
By Ornyth's son, young Calais ; 

For whose commutual flames here I, 15 

To save his life, twice am content to die. 

Hor. Say our first loves we should revoke, 
And sever'd, join in brazen yoke ; 
Admit I Chloe put away, 
And love again love-cast-off Lydia? 2c 

Lyd. Though mine be brighter than the star ; 
Thou lighter than the cork by far, 
Rough as th' Adratic sea, yet I 
Will live with thee, or else for thee will die. 



HESPERIDES. 29 



183. UPON PRIG. 



Prig now drinks water, who before drank beer ; 
What's now the cause? We know the case is clear 
Look in Prig's purse, the chev'ril there tells you 
Prig money wants, either to buy or brew. 



186. TO HIS DYING BROTHER, MASTER WILLIAM 
HERRICK. 

Life of my life, take not so soon thy flight, 

But stay the time till we have bade good night. 

Thou hast both wind and tide with thee ; thy way 

As soon dispatch'd is by the night as day : 

Let us not then so rudely henceforth go 5 

Till we have wept, kiss'd, sigh'd, shook hands, or so. 

There's pain in parting, and a kind of hell 

When once true lovers take their last farewell. 

What? shall we two our endless leaves take here 

Without a sad look, or a solemn tear? 10 

He knows not love that hath not this truth proved, 

Love is most loth to leave the thing beloved. 

Pay we our vows and go ; yet when we part, 

Then, even then, I will bequeath my heart 

Into thy loving hands ; for I'll keep none 15 

To warm my breast, when thou my pulse art gone. 

No, here I'll last, and walk, a harmless shade, 

About this urn, wherein thy dust is laid, 

To guard it so as nothing here shall be 

Heavy, to hurt those sacred seeds of thee. 20 



30 HESPERIDES. 

188. UPON MUCH-MORE. EPIG. 

Much-more provides and hoards up like an ant, 
Yet Much-more still complains he is in want. 
Let Much-more justly pay his tithes, then try 
How both his meal and oil will multiply. 

191. TO PANSIES. 

Ah, cruel Love ! must I endure 
Thy many scorns, and find no cure? 
Say, are thy medicines made to be 
Helps to all others but to me? 
I'll leave thee, and to Pansies come ; 
Comforts you'll afford me some : 
You can ease my heart, and do 
What love could ne'er be brought unto. 

192. ON GILLY-FLOWERS BEGOTTEN. 

What was't that fell but now 
From that warm kiss of ours? 

Look, look, by love I vow 
They were two gilly-flowers. 

Let's kiss, and kiss again ; 

For if so be our closes 
Make gilly-flowers, then 

I'm sure they'll fashion roses. 

194. TO HIS BOOK. 

Like to a bride, come forth, my book, at last, 
With all thy richest jewels overcast; 
Say, if there be 'mongst many gems here one 
Deserveless of the name of Paragon ; 



HESPERIDES. 31 

Blush not at all for that, since we have set 5 

Some pearls on queens that have been counterfet. 



197. THE WELCOME TO SACK. 
[Put after 128.] 



TO LIVE MERRILY, AND TO TRUST TO GOOD 
VERSES. 

Now is the time for mirth, 

Nor cheek or tongue be dumb ; 
For with the flow'ry earth, 

The golden pomp is come. 

The golden pomp is come ; 5 

For now each tree does wear, 
Made of her pap and gum, 

Rich beads of amber here. 

Now reigns the Rose, and now 

TV Arabian dew besmears 10 

My uncontrolled brow, 

And my retorted hairs. 

Homer, this health to thee, 

In sack of such a kind 
That it would make thee see, 15 

Though thou wert ne'er so blind. 

Next, Virgil I'll call forth, 

To pledge this second health 
In wine whose each cup's worth 

An Indian commonwealth. 20 



32 HESPERIDES. 

A goblet next I'll drink 

To Ovid ; and suppose 
Made he the pledge, he'd think 

The world had all one nose. 

Then this immensive cup 25 

Of aromatic wine, 
Catullus, I quaff up 

To that terse muse of thine. 

Wild I am now with heat, 

O Bacchus ! cool thy rays, 3° 

Or frantic I shall eat 

Thy thyrse, and bite the bays. 

Round, round, the roof does run; 

And being ravish'd thus, 
Come, I will drink a tun 35 

To my Propertius. 

Now, to Tibullus next, 

This flood I drink to thee ; 
But stay, I see a text, 

That this presents to me. 40 

Behold ! Tibullus lies 

Here burnt, whose small return 

Of ashes scarce suffice 
To fill a little urn. 

Trust to good verses then ; 45 

They only will aspire, 
When pyramids, as men, 

Are lost i' th' funeral fire, 



HESPERIDES. 33 

And when all bodies meet, 

In Lethe to be drown'd ; 50 

Then only numbers sweet 

With endless life are crown'd. 



205. TO VIOLETS. 

Welcome, maids of honor, 

You do bring 

In the spring, 
And wait upon her. 

She has virgins many, 5 

Fresh and fair ; 

Yet you are 
More sweet than any. 

Y'are the maiden posies, 

And so grac'd, 10 

To be plac'd, 
'Fore damask roses. 

Yet though thus respected, 

By-and-by 

Ye do lie, 15 

Poor girls, neglected. 



206. UPON BUNCE. EPIG. 

Money thou ow'st me : prithee fix a day 
For payment promis'd, though thou never pay: 
Let it be doomsday ; nay, take longer scope ; 
Pay when th'art honest, let me have some hope. 



34 HESPERIDES. 

208. TO THE VIRGINS, TO MAKE MUCH OF TIME. 

Gather ye rosebuds while ye may, 

Old Time is still a-flying ; 
And this same flower that smiles to-day, 

To-morrow will be dying. 

The glorious lamp of heaven, the sun, 5 

The higher he's a-getting, 
The sooner will his race be run, 

And nearer he's to setting. 

That age is best which is the first, 

When youth and blood are warmer ; 10 

But being spent, the worse and worst 

Times still succeed the former. 

Then be not coy, but use your time, 

And while ye may, go marry ; 
For having lost but once your prime, 15 

You may for ever tarry. 

211. HIS POETRY HIS PILLAR. 

Only a little more 

I have to write, 

Then I'll give o'er, 
And bid the world good-night. 

'Tis but a flying minute 5 

That I must stay, 

Or linger in it ; 
And then I must away. 

O Time, that cut'st down all, 

And scarce leav'st here IO 

Memorial 
Of any men that were ! 



HESPERIDES. 35 

How many lie forgot 

In vaults beneath, 

And piecemeal rot 15 

Without a fame in death ! 

Behold this living stone 

I rear for me, 

Ne'er to be thrown 
Down, envious Time, by thee. 20 

Pillars let some set up, 

If so they please, 

Here is my hope, 
And my pyramides. 

213. A PASTORAL UPON THE BIRTH OF PRINCE 

CHARLES, 

Presented to the King, and set by 

Mr. Nic: Laniere. 

The Speakers — Mirtillo, Amintas, and Amarillis. 

Amin. Good day, Mirtillo. Mirt. And to you no less ; 
And all fair signs lead on our shepherdess. 

Amar. With all white luck to you. Mirt. But say, what 

news 
Stirs in our sheep-walk ? Amin. None, save that my ewes, 
My wethers, lambs, and wanton kids are well, 5 

Smooth, fair, and fat, none better I can tell : 
Or that this day Menalcas keeps a feast 
For his sheep-shearers. Mirt. True, these are the least. 
But, dear Amintas, and sweet Amarillis, 
Rest but awhile here by this bank of lilies ; !° 

And lend a gentle ear to one report 
The country has. Amin. From whence ? Amar. From 

whence ? Mirt. The Court. 



36 HESPERIDES. 

Three days before the shutting in of May 

(With whitest wool be ever crown'd that day !) 

To all our joy, a sweet-fac'd child was born, 15 

More tender than the childhood of the morn. 

Chor. Pan pipe to him, and bleats of lambs and sheep 
Let lullaby the pretty Prince asleep. 

Mirt. And that his birth should be more singular, 
At noon of day was seen a silver star, 20 

Bright as the Wise-men's torch which guided them 
To God's sweet babe, when born at Bethlehem ; 
While golden angels, some have told to me, 
Sung out his birth with heav'nly minstrelsy. 

Amin. O rare ! But is't a trespass, if we three 25 

Should wend along his Baby-ship to see ? 

Mirt. Not so, not so. Chor. But if it chance to prove 
At most a fault, 'tis but a fault of love. 

Amar. But, dear Mirtillo, I have heard it told, 
Those learned men brought incense, myrrh, and gold, 30 
From countries far, with store of spices sweet, 
And laid them down for offerings at his feet. 

Mirt. 'Tis true, indeed ; and each of us will bring 
Unto our smiling and our blooming King, 
A neat, though not so great an offering. 35 

Amar. A garland for my gift shall be, 
Of flowers ne'er suck'd by th' thieving bee ; 
And all most sweet, yet all less sweet than he. 

Amin. And I will bear along with you 
Leaves dropping down the honied dew, 40 

With oaten pipes, as sweet, as new. 

Mirt. And I a sheep-hook will bestow 
To have his little king-ship know, 
As he is prince, he's shepherd too. 

Chor. Come, let's away, and quickly let's be dress'd, 45 
And quickly give. The swiftest grace is best. 



HESPERIDES. 37 

And when before him we have laid our treasures, 
We'll bless the babe, then back to country pleasures. 

214. TO THE LARK. 

Good speed, for I this day 
Betimes my matins say ; 

Because I do 

Begin to woo. 

Sweet singing lark, 5 

Be thou the clerk, 

And know thy when 

To say, Ameti. 

And if I prove 

Blest in my love, J o 

Then thou shalt be 

High-priest to me, 

At my return, 

To incense burn ; 
And so to solemnize I S 

Love's and my sacrifice. 

216. A MEDITATION FOR HIS MISTRESS. 

You are a Tulip seen to-day, 

But, dearest, of so short a stay, 

That where you grew, scarce man can say. 

You are a lovely July-flower, 

Yet one rude wind, or ruffling shower, 5 

Will force you hence, and in an hour. 

You are a sparkling Rose i' th' bud, 
Yet lost, ere that chaste flesh and blood 
Can show where you or grew or stood. 



38 HESPERIDES. 

You are a full-spread, fair-set Vine, 10 

And can with tendrils love entwine, 
Yet dried, ere you distil your wine. 

You are like Balm, inclosed well 
In amber, or some crystal shell, 
Yet lost ere you transfuse your smell. 15 

You are a dainty Violet, 

Yet wither'd, ere you can be set 

Within the virgin's coronet. 

You are the Queen all flowers among, 

But die you must, fair maid, ere long, 20 

As he, the maker of this song. 

218. LYRIC FOR LEGACIES. 

Gold I've none, for use or show, 

Neither silver to bestow 

At my death ; but thus much know, 

That each lyric here shall be 

Of my love a legacy, 5 

Left to all posterity. 

Gentle friends, then do but please 

To accept such coins as these, 

As my last remembrances. 

223. THE FAIRY TEMPLE; or, OBERON'S CHAPEL. 

Dedicated to Mr. John Merrifield, 

Counsellor-at-Law. 

Rare temples thou hast seen, I know, 
And rich for in and outward show ; 
Survey this chapel, built alone 
Without or lime, or wood or stone, 



HESPERIDES. 39 



Then say, if one th'ast seen more fine 
Than this, the fairies' once, now thine. 



THE TEMPLE. 

A way enchas'd with glass and beads 

There is, that to the chapel leads, 

Whose structure, for his holy rest, 

Is here the halcyon's curious nest ; 

Into the which who looks, shall see 5 

His temple of idolatry, 

Where he of godheads has such store, 

As Rome's Pantheon had not more. 

His house of Rimmon this he calls, 

Girt with small bones, instead of walls. 10 

First, in a niche, more black than jet, 

His idol-cricket there is set ; 

Then in a polish'd oval by, 

There stands his idol-beetle-fly; 

Next, in an arch, akin to this, 15 

His idol-canker seated is ; 

Then in a round, is plac'd by these 

His golden god, Cantharides. 

So that where'er ye look, ye see 

No capital, no cornish free, 20 

Or frieze, from this fine frippery. 

Now, this the fairies would have known, 

Theirs is a mix'd religion : 

And some have heard the elves it call 

Part Pagan, part Papistical. 25 

If unto me all tongues were granted, 

I could not speak the saints here painted. 

Saint Tit, Saint Nit, Saint Is, Saint Itis, 

Who 'gainst Mab's state plac'd here right is. 



40 HESPERIDES. 

Saint Will o'th' Wisp, of no great bigness, 30 

But alias call'd here Fatnus ignis. 

Saint Frip, Saint Trip, Saint Fill, Saint Filly, 

Neither those other saintships will I 

Here go about for to recite 

Their number, almost infinite ; 35 

Which, one by one, here set down are 

In this most curious calendar. 

First, at the entrance to the gate, 

A little puppet-priest doth wait, 

Who squeaks to all the comers there, 40 

Favor your tongues, who enter here. 

Pure hands bring hither, without stain. 

A second pules, Hence, hence, prof ane. 

Hard by, i' th' shell of half a nut, 

The holy-water there is put ; 45 

A little brush of squirrel's hairs, 

Compos'd of odd, not even pairs, 

Stands in the platter or close by, 

To purge the fairy family. 

Near to the altar stands the priest, 50 

There off'ring up the Holy Grist, 

Ducking in mood and perfect tense, 

With (much good do't him) reverence. 

The altar is not here four-square, 

Nor in a form triangular; 55 

Nor made of glass, or wood, or stone, 

But of a little transverse bone 

Which boys and bruckel'd children call 

(Playing for points and pins) cockall. 

Whose linen drapery is a thin, 60 

Subtile, and ductile codlin's skin ; 

Which o'er the board is smoothly spread 

With little seal-work damasked. 



HESPERIDES. 41 

The fringe that circumbinds it, too, 

Is spangle-work of trembling dew, 65 

Which, gently gleaming, makes a show 

Like frost-work glitt'ring on the snow. 

Upon this fetuous board doth stand 

Something for shew-bread, and at hand 

(Just in the middle of the altar) 70 

Upon an end, the Fairy-psalter, 

Graced with the trout-fly's curious wings, 

Which serve for watched ribbonings. 

Now, we must know, the elves are led 

Right by the Rubric, which they read : 75 

And if report of them be true, 

They have their text for what they do, 

Ay, and their book of canons too. 

And, as Sir Thomas Parson tells, 

They have their book of Articles ; 80 

And if that Fairy knight not lies, 

They have their Book of Homilies ; 

And other Scriptures, that design 

A short, but righteous discipline. 

The basin stands the board upon 85 

To take the Free Oblation, 

A little pin-dust, which they hold 

More precious than we prize our gold ; 

Which charity they give to many 

Poor of the parish, if there's any. 90 

Upon the ends of these neat rails, 

Hatch'd with the silver-light of snails, 

The elves, in formal manner, fix 

Two pure and holy candlesticks, 

In either which a small tall bent 95 

Burns for the altar's ornament. 

For sanctity, they have, to these, 



42 HESPERIDES. 

Their curious copes and surplices 

Of cleanest cobweb, hanging by 

In their religious vestery. I0 ° 

They have their ash-pans and their brooms, 

To purge the chapel and the rooms ; 

Their many mumbling mass-priests here, 

And many a dapper chorister. 

Their ush'ring vergers here likewise, 105 

Their canons and their chanteries ; 

Of cloister-monks they have enow, 

Ay, and their abbey-lubbers too. 

And if their Legend do not lie, 

They much affect the Papacy; no 

And since the last is dead, there's hope 

Elf Boniface shall next be Pope. 

They have their cups and chalices, 

Their pardons and indulgences, 

Their beads of nits, bells, books, and wax "5 

Candles, forsooth, and other knacks ; 

Their holy oil, their fasting spittle, 

Their sacred salt here, not a little. 

Dry chips, old shoes, rags, grease, and bones, 

Beside their fumigations. I2 ° 

Many a trifle, too, and trinket, 

And for what use, scarce man would think it. 

Next then, upon the chanters' side 125 

An apple's-core is hung up dry'd, 

With rattling kernels, which is rung 

To call to morn and even-song. 

The saint, to which the most he prays 

And offers incense nights and days, 13° 

The Lady of the Lobster is, 

Whose foot-pace he doth stroke and kiss, 

And humbly chives of saffron brings, 



HESPERIDES. 43 

For his most cheerful offerings. 

When, after these, h'as paid his vows, 135 

He lowly to the altar bows ; 

And then he dons the silkworm's shed, 

Like a Turk's turbant on his head, 

And reverently departeth thence, 

Hid in a cloud of frankincense ; 140 

And by the glow-worm's light well guided, 

Goes to the feast that's now provided. 



293. OBERON'S FEAST. 

Shapcot ! to thee the fairy state 

I with discretion dedicate ; 

Because thou prizest things that are 

Curious and unfamiliar. 

Take first the Feast ; these dishes gone, 5 

We'll see the Fairy-Court anon. 

A little mushroom table spread, 

After short prayers they set on bread, 

A moon-parch'd grain of purest wheat, 

With some small glitt'ring grit, to eat I0 

His choice bits with ; then in a trice 

They make a feast less great than nice. 

But all this while his eye is serv'd, 

We must not think his ear was starv'd ; 

But that there was in place to stir 15 

His spleen, the chirring grasshopper, 

The merry cricket, puling fly, 

The piping gnat for minstrelsy. 

And now, we must imagine first, 

The elves present, to quench his thirst, 20 



44 HESPERIDES. 

A pure seed-pearl of infant dew, 

Brought and besweet'ned in a blue 

And pregnant violet ; which done, 

His kitling eyes begin to run 

Quite through the table, where he spies 25 

The horns of papery butterflies, 

Of which he eats ; and tastes a little 

Of that we call the cuckoo's spittle ; 

A little fuzz-ball pudding stands 

By, yet not blessed by his hands, 30 

That was too coarse ; but then forthwith 

He ventures boldly on the pith 

Of sug'red rush, and eats the sag 

And well bestrutted bee's sweet bag ; 

Gladding his palate with some store 3 5 

Of emmets' eggs ; what would he more, 

But beards of mice, a newt's stew'd thigh, 

A bloated earwig, and a fly ; 

With the red-capp'd worm, that's shut 

Within the concave of a nut, 40 

Brown as his tooth. A little moth, 

Late fat'ned in a piece of cloth ; 

With withered cherries, mandrake's ears, 

Mole's eyes ; to these the slain stag's tears ; 

The unctuous dewlaps of a snail, 45 

The broke-heart of a nightingale 

O'er-come in music ; with a wine 

Ne'er ravish'd from the flattering vine, 

But gently press'd from the soft side 

Of the most sweet and dainty bride, 50 

Brought in a dainty daisy, which 

He fully quaffs up to bewitch 

His blood to height ; this done, commended 

Grace by his priest, the feast is ended. 



HESPERJDES. 45 



444. OBERON'S PALACE. 

After the feast, my Shapcot, see 

The Fairy Court I give to thee ; 

Where we'll present our Oberon led 

Half-tipsy to the Fairy bed, 

Where Mab he finds, who there doth lie 5 

Not without mickle majesty. 

Which done, and thence remov'd the light, 

We'll wish both them and thee good-night. 

Full as a bee with thyme, and red 

As cherry harvest, now high fed 10 

For lust and action ; on he'll go 

To lie with Mab, though all say no. 

Lust has no ears ; he's sharp as thorn, 

And fretful, carries hay in 's horn, 

And lightning in his eyes ; and flings 15 

Among the elves, if mov'd, the stings 

Of peltish wasps ; well know his guard, 

Kings, though tWare hated, will be fear' d. 

Wine lead him on. Thus to a grove, 

Sometimes devoted unto love, 20 

Tinsel'd with twilight, he and they 

Led by the shine of snails, a way 

Beat with their num'rous feet, which by 

Many a neat perplexity, 

Many a turn, and man' a cross- 25 

Track, they redeem a bank of moss 

Spongy and swelling, and far more 

Soft then the finest Lemster ore ; 

Mildly disparkling, like those fires 

Which break from the injewel'd tyres 3° 



46 HESPERIDES. 

Of curious brides ; or like those mites 

Of candy'd dew in moony nights. 

Upon this convex, all the flowers 

Nature begets by th' sun and showers, 

Are to a wild digestion brought, 35 

As if Love's sampler here was wrought ; 

Or Citherea's ceston, which 

All with temptation doth bewitch. 

Sweet airs move here, and more divine 

Made by the breath of great-ey'd kine, 40 

Who, as they low, empearl with milk 

The four-leav'd grass, or moss like silk. 

The breath of monkeys, met to mix 

With musk-flies, are th' aromatics 

Which cense this arch ; and here and there, 45 

And farther off, and everywhere 

Throughout that brave mosaic yard, 

Those picks or diamonds in the card ; 

With peeps of hearts, of club and spade, 

Are here most neatly interlaid. 50 

Many a counter, many a die, 

Half-rotten and without an eye, 

Lies hereabouts ; and for to pave 

The excellency of this cave, 

Squirrels' and children's teeth late shed, 55 

Are neatly here enchequered, 

With brownest toadstones, and the gum 

That shines upon the bluer plum, 

The nails fallen off by whit : flaws ; Art's 

Wise hand enchasing here those warts 60 

Which we to others (from ourselves) 

Sell, and brought hither by the elves. 

The tempting mole, stol'n from the neck 

Of the shy virgin, seems to deck 



HESPERIDES. 47 

The holy entrance ; where within 65 

The room is hung with the blue skin 
Of shifted snake ; enfriez'd throughout 
With eyes of peacocks' trains, and trout- 
flies' curious wings ; and these among 
Those silver-pence, that cut the tongue 70 

Of the red infant, neatly hung. 
The glow-worm's eyes, the shining scales 
Of silv'ry fish, wheat-straws, the snail's 
Soft candle-light, the kitling's eyne, 
Corrupted wood, serve here for shine. 75 

No glaring light of bold-fac'd day, 
Or other over-radiant ray, 
Ransacks this room ; but what weak beams 
Can make reflected from these gems, 
And multiply ; such is the light, 80 

But ever doubtful, day or night. 
By this quaint taper-light, he winds 
His errors up ; and now he finds 
His moon-tann'd Mab, as somewhat sick, 
And, love knows, tender as a chick. 85 

Upon six plump dandillions, high- 
Rear'd, lies her elvish majesty, 
Whose woolly bubbles seemed to drown 
Her Mabship in obedient down ; 
For either sheet was spread the caul 9° 

That doth the infant's face enthral, 
When it is born, by some enstyl'd 
The lucky omen of the child ; 
And next to these, two blankets o'er- 
Cast of the finest gossamore ; 95 

And then a rug of carded wool, 
Which, sponge-like, drinking in the dull 
Light of the moon, seemed to comply, 



48 HESPERIDES. 

Cloud-like, the dainty deity. 

Thus soft she lies ; and over-head ioo 

A spinner's circle is bespread 
With cobweb curtains, from the roof 
So neatly sunk, as that no proof 
Of any tackling can declare 

What gives it hanging in the air. 105 

# # # * # 



445. TO HIS PECULIAR FRIEND, MASTER THOMAS 
SHAPCOTT, LAWYER. 

I've paid thee what I promis'd ; that's not all ; 
Besides, I give thee here a verse that shall, 
When hence thy circummortal part is gone, 
Arch-like, hold up, thy name's inscription, 
terave men can't die, whose candid actions are 
Writ in the poet's endless calendar : 
Whose vellum and whose volume is the sky, 
And the pure stars the praising poetry. 

Farewell. 



224. TO MISTRESS KATHERINE BRADSHAW, THE 
LOVELY, THAT CROWNED HIM WITH LAUREL. 

My Muse in meads has spent her many hours 
Sitting, and sorting several sorts of flowers, 
To make for others garlands ; and to set 
On many a head here, many a coronet. ' 
But amongst all encircled here, not one 
Gave her a day of coronation, 
Till you, sweet mistress, came and interwove 
A laurel for her, ever young as love. 



HESPERIDES. 49 

You first of all crown'd her ; she must, of due, 
Render for that a crown of life to you. 10 



225. THE PLAUDITE; or, END OF LIFE. 

If after rude and boist'rous seas, 

My weaned pinnace here finds ease ; 

If so it be I've gain'd the shore, 

With safety of a faithful oar ; 

If having run my barque on ground, 5 

Ye see the aged vessel crown'd ; 

What's to be done, but on the sands 

Ye dance and sing, and now clap hands ? 

The first act's doubtful, but we say, 

It is the last commends the play. J o 

227. TO MUSIC, TO BECALM HIS FEVER. 

Charm me asleep, and melt me so 

With thy delicious numbers, 
That being ravish'd, hence I go 
Away in easy slumbers. 

Ease my sick head, 5 

And make my bed, 
Thou power that canst sever 
From me this ill, 
And quickly still 

Though thou not kill 10 

My fever. 

Thou sweetly canst convert the same 

From a consuming fire 
Into a gentle-licking flame, 

And make it thus expire. 15 



50 HESPERIDES. 

Then make me weep 
My pains asleep, 
And give me such reposes, 
That I, poor I, 

May think, thereby, 20 

I live and die 
'Mongst roses. 

Fall on me like a silent dew, 

Or like those maiden showers 
Which, by the peep of day, do strew 25 

A baptime o'er the flowers. 
Melt, melt my pains, 
With thy soft strains, 
That having ease me given, 

With full delight, 30 

I leave this light, 
And take my flight 
For Heaven. 

247. THE COMING OF GOOD LUCK. 

So Good-luck came, and on my roof did light, 
Like noiseless snow, or as the dew of night ; 
Not all at once, but gently, as the trees 
Are by the sunbeams tickel'd by degrees. 

250. THE HOCK-CART; or, HARVEST HOME. 

To the Right Honorable Mildmay, 

Earl of Westmorland. 

Come, sons of summer, by whose toil, 
We are the lords of wine and oil ; 
By whose tough labors and rough hands, 
We rip up first, then reap our lands ; 



HESPERIDES. 51 

Crown'd with the ears of corn, now come, 5 

And, to the pipe, sing Harvest home ! 

Come forth, my lord, and see the cart 

Dress'd up with all the country art. 

See, here a maukin, there a sheet, 

As spotless pure as it is sweet ; 10 

The horses, mares, and frisking fillies, 

Clad all in linen white as lilies ; 

The harvest swains and wenches bound 

For joy, to see the Hock-cart crown'd. 

About the cart hear how the rout 15 

Of rural younglings raise the shout, 

Pressing before, some coming after, 

Those with a shout, and these with laughter. 

Some bless the cart, some kiss the sheaves, 

Some prank them up with oaken leaves ; 20 

Some cross the fill-horse, some with great 

Devotion stroke the home-borne wheat, 

While other rustics, less attent 

To prayers than to merriment, 

Run after with their breeches rent. 25 

Well, on, brave boys, to your lord's hearth, 

Glitt'ring with fire, where, for your mirth, 

Ye shall see first the large and chief 

Foundation of your feast, fat beef ; 

With upper stories, mutton, veal, 30 

And bacon, which makes full the meal, 

With sev'ral dishes standing by, 

As, here a custard, there a pie, 

And here all-tempting frumenty. 

And for to make the merry cheer, 35 

If smirking wine be wanting here, 

There's that which drowns all care, stout beer, 

Which freely drink to your lord's health, 



52 HESPERIDES. 

Then to the plough, (the commonwealth); 

Next to your flails, your fanes, your fats ; 40 

Then to the maids with wheaten hats ; 

To the rough sickle, and the crook'd scythe ; 

Drink, frolic, boys, till all be blithe. 

Feed and grow fat, and as ye eat, 

Be mindful that the lab'ring neat, 45 

As you, may have their fill of meat ; 

And know, besides, ye must revoke 

The patient ox unto the yoke, 

And all go back unto the plough 

And harrow, though they're hang'd up now. 50 

And, you must know, your lord's word's true, 

Feed him ye must, whose food fills you. 

And that this pleasure is like rain, 

Not sent ye for to drown your pain, 

But for to make it spring again. 55 

251. THE PERFUME. 

To-morrow, Julia, I betimes must rise, 

For some small fault to offer sacrifice ; 

The altar's ready ; fire to consume 

The fat ; breathe thou, and there's the rich perfume. 

255. TO THE WESTERN WIND. 

Sweet western wind, whose luck it is, 

Made rival with the air, 
To give Perenna's lip a kiss, 

And fan her wanton hair. 

Bring me but one, I'll promise thee, 5 

Instead of common showers, 
Thy wings shall be embalm'd by me, 

And all beset with flowers. 



HESPERIDES. 53 

256. UPON THE DEATH OF HIS SPARROW. 

An Elegy. 

Why do not all fresh maids appear 

To work Love's sampler only here, 

Where spring-time smiles throughout the year ? 

Are not here rosebuds, pinks, all flowers 

Nature begets by th' sun and showers, 5 

Met in one hearse-cloth, to o'erspread 

The body of the under-dead ? 

Phil, the late dead, the late dead dear, 

O ! may no eye distil a tear 

For you once lost, who weep not here ! 10 

Had Lesbia, too too kind, but known 

This sparrow, she had scorn'd her own, 

And for this dead which under-lies, 

Wept out her heart, as well as eyes. 

But endless peace, sit here, and keep 15 

My Phil, the time he has to sleep, 

And thousand virgins come and weep, 

To make these flow'ry carpets show 

Fresh as their blood, and ever grow, 

Till passengers shall spend their doom ; 20 

Not Virgil's gnat had such a tomb. 

257. TO PRIMROSES FILL'D.WITH MORNING DEW. 

Why do ye weep, sweet babes? Can tears 
Speak grief in you, 
Who were but born 
Just as the modest morn 

Teem'd her refreshing dew ? 5 

Alas, you have not known that shower 
That mars a flower, 



54 HESPERIDES. 

Nor felt th' unkind 
Breath of a blasting wind, 
Nor are ye worn with years, 10 

Or warp'd, as we, 

Who think it strange to see 

Such pretty flowers, like to orphans young, 

To speak by tears before ye have a tongue. 

Speak, whimp'ring younglings, and make known 15 

The reason why 
Ye droop and weep. 
Is it for want of sleep? 
Or childish lullaby? 
Or that ye have not seen as yet 20 

The violet ? 
Or brought a kiss 
From that sweetheart to this? 
No, no, this sorrow shown 

By your tears shed 25 

Would have this lecture read, 
That things of greatest, so of meanest worth, 
Conceiv'd with grief are, and with tears brought forth. 



258. HOW ROSES CAME RED. 

Roses at first were white, 
Till they could not agree, 

Whether my Sapho's breast 
Or they more white should be. 

But being vanquish'd quite, 

A blush their cheeks bespread ; 

Since which, believe the rest, 
The roses first came red. 



HESPERIDES. 55 



262. TO THE WILLOW TREE. 

Thou art to all lost love the best, 

The only true plant found, 
Wherewith young men and maids distress'd, 

And left of love, are crown 'd. 

When once the lover's rose is dead, 

Or laid aside forlorn, 
Then willow garlands 'bout the head, 

Bedew'd with tears, are worn. 

When with neglect, the lover's bane, 

Poor maids rewarded be, 
For their lost love, their only gain 

Is but a wreath from thee. 

And underneath thy cooling shade, 

When weary of the light, 
The love-spent youth and love-sick maid 

Come to weep out the night. 



267. TO ANTHEA, WHO MAY COMMAND HIM 
ANYTHING. 

Bid me to live, and I will live 

Thy Protestant to be ; 
Or bid me love, and I will give 

A loving heart to thee. 

A heart as soft, a heart as kind, 

A heart as sound and free, 
As in the whole world thou canst find, 

That heart I'll give to thee. 



56 HESPERIDES. 

Bid that heart stay, and it will stay, 

To honor thy decree ; 10 

Or bid it languish quite away, 
And 't shall do so for thee. 

Bid me to weep, and I will weep, 

While I have eyes to see ; 
And having none, yet I will keep 15 

A heart to weep for thee. 

Bid me despair, and I'll despair, 

Under that cypress tree ; 
Or bid me die, and I will dare 

E'en death, to die for thee. 20 

Thou art my life, my love, my heart, 

The very eyes of me ; 
And hast command of every part, 

To live and die for thee. 



269. OBEDIENCE IN SUBJECTS. 

The gods to kings the judgment give to sway ; 
The subjects' only glory to obey. 



273. UPON BROCK. EPIG. 

To cleanse his eyes, Tom Brock makes much ado, 
But not his mouth, the fouler of the two. 
A clammy rheum makes loathsome both his eyes ; 
His mouth worse furr'd with oaths and blasphemies. 



HESPERIDES. 57 

274. TO MEADOWS. 

Ye have been fresh and green, 

Ye have been fill'd with flowers ; 
And ye the walks have been 

Where maids have spent their hours. 

You have beheld how they 5 

With wicker arks did come, 
To kiss and bear away 

The richer cowslips home. 

Y'ave heard them sweetly sing, 

And seen them in a round ; 10 

Each virgin, like a spring, 

With honeysuckles crown'd. 

But now, we see none here 

Whose silv'ry feet did tread 
And with dishevelPd hair 15 

Adorn'd this smoother mead. 

Like unthrifts, having spent 

Your stock, and needy grown, 
Y'are left here to lament 

Your poor estates, alone. 20 

275. CROSSES. 

Though good things answer many good intents, 
Crosses do still bring forth the best events. 

278. TO HIS HOUSEHOLD GODS. 

Rise, Household gods, and let us go, 
But whither, I myself not know. 
First, let us dwell on rudest seas ; 
Next, with severest salvages ; 



58 HESPERIDES, 

Last, let us make our best abode, 
Where human foot as yet ne'er trod ; 
Search worlds of ice, and rather there 
Dwell, than in loathed Devonshire. 

279. TO THE NIGHTINGALE AND ROBIN REDBREAST. 

When I departed am, ring thou my knell, 
Thou pitiful and pretty Philomel ; 
And when I'm laid out for a corse, then be 
Thou sexton, Redbreast, for to cover me. 

280. TO THE YEW AND CYPRESS TO GRACE HIS 

FUNERAL. 

Both you two have 
Relation to the grave ; 
And where 
The fun'ral-trump sounds, you are there. 

I shall be made 
Ere long a fleeting shade ; 
Pray come, 
And do some honor to my tomb. 

Do not deny 
My last request, for I 
Will be 
Thankful to you, or friends for me. 

283. A NUPTIAL SONG; or, EPITHALAMIE ON SIR 
CLIPSEBY CREW AND HIS LADY. 

What's that we see from far ? The spring of day 
Bloom'd from the east, or fair injewel'd May 

Blown out of April ; or some new 

Star fill'd with glory to our view, 



HESPERIDES. 59 

Reaching at heaven, 5 

To add a nobler planet to the seven ? 

Say, or do we not descry 
Some goddess in a cloud of tiffany 
To move, or rather the 
Emergent Venus from the sea ? 10 

'Tis she ! 'tis she ! or else some more divine 
Enlight'ned substance ; mark how from the shrine 

Of holy saints she paces on, 

Treading upon vermilion 

And amber; spice- l 5 

ing the chaf'd air with fumes of Paradise. 

Then come on, come on, and yield 
A savor like unto a blessed field 

When the bedabbled morn 

Washes the golden ears of corn. 20 

See where she comes, and smell how all the street 
Breathes vineyards and pomegranates ; O how sweet ! 

As a fir'd altar, is each stone, 

Perspiring pounded cinnamon. 

The phoenix' nest, 2 5 

Built up of odors, burneth in her breast. 

Who therein would not consume 
His soul to ash-heaps in that rich perfume ? 
Bestroking fate the while 

He burns to embers on the pile. 3° 

Hymen, O Hymen ! tread the sacred ground ; 

Show thy white feet, and head with marjoram crown'd : 

Mount up thy flames, and let thy torch 

Display the bridegroom in the porch, 

In his desires 35 

More tow'ring, more disparkling than thy fires ; 



60 HESPERIDES. 

Show her how his eyes do turn 
And roll about, and in their motions burn 
Their balls to cinders ; haste, 
Or else to ashes he will waste. 40 

Glide by the banks of virgins then, and pass 
The showers of roses, lucky four-leav'd grass ; 

The while the cloud of younglings sing, 

And drown ye with a flow'ry spring ; 

While some repeat 45 

Your praise, and bless you, sprinkling you with wheat ; 

While that others do divine, 
Blest is the bride, on whom the sun doth shine ; 
And thousands gladly wish 

You multiply, as doth a fish. 50 

And beauteous bride, we do confess y'are wise, 

In dealing forth these bashful jealousies : 
In Love's name do so, and a price 
Set on your self, by being nice. 

But yet take heed : 55 

What now you seem, be not the same indeed, 
And turn apostate ; Love will 

Part of the way be met, or sit stone still. 
On then, and though you slow- 
ly go, yet, howsoever, go. 60 

And now y'are enter'd, see the coddled cook 
Runs from his torrid zone, to pry and look, 

And bless his dainty mistress ; see, 

The aged point out, This is she 

Who now must sway 65 

The house (Love shield her) with her Yea and Nay ; 

And the smirk butler thinks it 
Sin, in's nap'ry, not to express his wit ; 



HESPERIDES. 61 

Each striving to devise 
Some gin, wherewith to catch your eyes. 70 

By the bride's eyes, and by the teeming life 

Of her green hopes, we charge ye, that no strife, 

Farther than gentleness, gets place 

Among ye, striving for her lace. 

O do not fall 85 

Foul in these noble pastimes, lest ye call 

Discord in, and so divide 
The youthful bridegroom and the fragrant bride ; 
Which Love forefend ; but spoken 

Be't to your praise, no peace was broken. 90 

And to enchant ye more, see everywhere 
About the roof a siren in a sphere, 

As we think, singing to the din 

Of many a warbling cherubin. 

O mark ye how 105 

The soul of Nature melts in numbers ; now 

See, a thousand Cupids fly, 
To light their tapers at the bride's bright eye. 
To bed, or her they'll tire, 

Were she an element of fire. no 

All now is hushed in silence ; midwife moon, 
With all her owl-ey'd issue, begs a boon 

Which you must grant ; that's entrance ; with 

Which extract all we can call pith 

And quintessence 155 

Of planetary bodies ; so commence 

All fair constellations 
Looking upon ye, that, two nations 

Springing from two such fires, 

May blaze the virtue of their sires. 160 



6 2 HESPERJDES. 



288. DEVOTION MAKES THE DEITY. 

Who forms a godhead out of gold or stone, 
Makes not a god ; but he that prays to one. 



293. OBERON'S FEAST. 
[Placed after 223.] 

299. THE BELLMAN. 

From noise of scare-fires rest ye free, 
From murders benedicite, 
From all mischances that may fright 
Your pleasing slumbers in the night 
Mercy secure ye all, and keep 
The goblin from ye, while ye sleep. 
Past one o'clock, and almost two, 
My masters all, Good day to you. 

302. UPON PRUDENCE BALDWIN, HER SICKNESS. 

Prue, my dearest maid, is sick, 
Almost to be lunatic : 
iEsculapius, come and bring 
Means for her recovering, 
And a gallant cock shall be 
Offer'd up by her to thee. 

306. ON HIMSELF. 

Here down my wearied limbs I'll lay; 
My pilgrim's staff, my weed of grey, 
My palmer's hat, my scallop's shell, 
My cross, my cord, and all farewell. 



HESPERIDES. 63 

For having now my journey done, 5 

Just at the setting of the sun, 

Here have I found a chamber fit, 

God and good friends be thank'd for it, 

Where if I can a lodger be 

A little while from tramplers free ; 10 

At my uprising next, I shall, 

If not requite, yet thank ye all. 

Meanwhile, the Holy-rood hence fright 

The fouler fiend and evil sprite, 

From scaring you or yours this night. 1 5 



310. UPON A CHILD THAT DIED. 

Here she lies, a pretty bud, 
Lately made of flesh and blood ; 
Who, as soon fell fast asleep, 
As her little eyes did peep. 
Give her strewings ; but not stir 
The earth, that lightly covers her. 



313. THE ENTERTAINMENT; or, PORCH- VERSE, at 

the Marriage of Mr. Hen. Northly, and the 

most witty Mrs. Lettice Yard. 

Welcome ! but yet no entrance, till we bless 
First you, then you, and both for white success. 
Profane no porch, young man and maid, for fear 
Ye wrong the Threshold-god that keeps peace here : 
Please him, and then all good-luck will betide 
You, the brisk bridegroom, you, the dainty bride. 
Do all things sweetly, and in comely wise ; 
Put on your garlands first, then sacrifice ; 



64 HESPERIDES. 

That done, when both of you have seemly fed, 

We'll call on night to bring ye both to bed ; 10 

Where being laid, all fair signs looking on, 

Fish-like, increase then to a million ; 

And millions of spring-times may ye have, 

Which spent, one death bring to ye both one grave. 

314. THE GOOD-NIGHT, or BLESSING. 

Blessings, in abundance come 

To the bride and to her groom ; 

Pleasures many here attend ye, 5 

And ere long a boy Love send ye, 

Curl'd and comely, and so trim, 

Maids, in time, may ravish him. 

Thus a dew of graces fall 

On ye both. Good-night to all. 10 

316. TO DAFFODILS. 

Fair Daffodils, we weep to see 

You haste away so soon ; 
As yet the early rising sun 
Has not attain'd his noon. 

Stay, stay, 5 

Until the hasting day 
Has run 
But to the even-song ; 
And, having pray'd together, we 

Will go with you along. 10 

We have short time to stay, as you, 

We have as short a spring ; 
As quick a growth to meet decay, 

As you, or anything. 



HESPERIDES. 65 

We die 15 

As your hours do, and dry 

Away, 
Like to the summer's rain ; 
Or as the pearls of morning's dew, 

Ne'er to be found again. 20 



319. A NEW YEAR'S GIFT SENT TO SIR SIMEON 
STEWARD. 

No news of navies burnt at seas ; 

No noise of late-spawn'd Tityries, 

No closet plot or open vent, 

That frights men with a Parliament ; 

No new device or late found trick, 5 

To read by th' stars the kingdom's sick; 

No gin to catch the State, or wring 

The free-born nosthril of the King, 

We send to you ; but here a jolly 

Verse crowned with ivy and with holly; 10 

That tells of winter's tales and mirth, 

That milk-maids make about the hearth ; 

Of Christmas sports, the wassail-bowl, 

That tost up after Fox-i'-th'-hole ; 

Of Blind-man-buff, and of the care 15 

That young men have to shoe the mare ; 

Of Twelf-tide cakes, of peas and beans, 

Wherewith ye make those merry scenes, 

Whenas ye choose your king and queen, 

And cry out, Hey for our town green. 20 

Of ash-heaps, in the which ye use 

Husbands and wives by streaks to choose ; 

Of crackling laurel, which fore-sounds 

A plenteous harvest to your grounds ; 



66 HESPERIDES. 

Of these, and such like things, for shift, 25 

We send instead of New-year's gift : 

Read then, and when your faces shine 

With buxom meat and cap'ring wine, 

Remember us in cups full crown'd, 

And let our city-health go round, 3° 

Quite through the young maids and the men, 

To the ninth number, if not ten ; 

Until the fired chestnuts leap 

For joy to see the fruits ye reap 

From the plump chalice and the cup 35 

That tempts till it be tossed up. 

Then as ye sit about your embers, 

Call not to mind those fled Decembers; 

But think on these that are t' appear 

As daughters to the instant year ; 40 

Sit crown'd with rose-buds, and carouse, 

Till Liber Pater twirls the house 

About your ears, and lay upon 

The year your cares, that's fled and gone. 

And let the russet swains the plough 45 

And harrow hang up resting now ; 

And to the bagpipe all address, 

Till sleep takes place of weariness. 

And thus, throughout, with Christmas plays 

Frolic the full twelve holy-days. 50 



323. THE CHRISTIAN MILITANT. 

A man prepar'd against all ills to come, 
That dares to dead the fire of martyrdom ; 
That sleeps at home, and sailing there at ease, 
Fears not the fierce sedition of the seas ; 



HESPERIDES. 67 

That's counter-proof against the farm's mishaps, 5 

Undreadful, too, of courtly thunderclaps ; 

That wears one face, like heaven, and never shows 

A change, when fortune either comes or goes ; 

That keeps his own strong guard, in the despite 

Of what can hurt by day, or harm by night ; 10 

That takes and re-delivers every stroke 

Of chance, as made up all of rock and oak ; 

That sighs at others' death, smiles at his own 

Most dire and horrid crucifixion : 

Who for true glory suffers thus, we grant 15 

Him to be here our Christian militant. 

324. A SHORT HYMN TO LAR. 

t Though I cannot give thee fires 
Glitt'ring to my free desires ; 
These accept, and I'll be free, 
Offering poppy unto thee. 

325. ANOTHER TO NEPTUNE. 

Mighty Neptune, may it please 

Thee, the rector of the seas, 

That my barque may safely run 

Through thy wat'ry region, 

And a tunny-fish shall be 5 

Offer'd up with thanks to thee. 

327. HIS EMBALMING: TO JULIA. 

For my embalming, Julia, do but this, 
Give thou my lips but their supremest kiss ; 
Or else transfuse thy breath into the chest 
Where my small reliques must for ever rest; 



68 HESPERIDES. 

That breath the balm, the myrrh, the nard shall be, 
To give an incorruption unto me. 

333. TO LAR. 

No more shall I, since I am driven hence, 

Devote to thee my grains of frankincense ; 

No more shall I from mantle-trees hang down. 

To honor thee, my little parsley crown ; 

No more shall I, I fear me, to thee bring 

My chives of garlic for an offering ; 

No more shall I, from henceforth, hear a quire 

Of merry crickets by my country fire. 

Go where I will, thou lucky Lar stay here, 

Warm by a glitt'ring chimney all the year. 

» 
334. THE DEPARTURE OF THE GOOD DEMON. 

What can I do in poetry, 
Now the good spirit's gone from me ? 
Why nothing now, but lonely sit, 
And over-read what I have writ. 

336. HIS AGE. 

Dedicated to his Peculiar Friend, M. John Wickes, 
Under the name of Posthumus. 

Ah Posthumus ! our years hence fly, 
And leave no sound ; nor piety, 

Or prayers, or vow 
Can keep the wrinkle from the brow ; 

But we must on, 
As fate does lead or draw us ; none, 
None, Posthumus, could e'er decline 
The doom of cruel Proserpine. 



HESPERIDES. 69 

The pleasing wife, the house, the ground 

Must all be left, no one plant found 10 

To follow thee, 
Save only the curs'd cypress tree ; 

A merry mind 
Looks forward, scorns what's left behind ; 
Let's live, my Wickes, then, while we may, 15 

And here enjoy our holiday. 

Wave seen the past-best times, and these 
Will ne'er return ; we see the seas, 

And moons to wane, 
But they fill up their ebbs again ; 20 

But vanish'd man, 
Like to a lily lost, ne'er can, 
Ne'er can repullulate, or bring 
His days to see a second spring. 

But on we must, and thither tend, 2 5 

Where Ancus and rich Tullus blend 

Their sacred seed ; 
Thus has infernal Jove decreed ; 

We must be made 
Ere long a song, ere long a shade. 3° 

Why then, since life to us is short, 
Let's make it full up by our sport. 

Crown we our heads with roses, then, 
And 'noint with Tyrian balm ; for when 

We two are dead, 35 

The world with us is buried. 

Then live we free 
As is the air, and let us be 
Our own fair wind, and mark each one 
Day with the white and lucky stone. 4° 



70 HESPERIDES. 

We are not poor, although we have 
No roofs of cedar, nor our brave 

Baiae, nor keep 
Account of such a flock of sheep, 

Nor bullocks fed 45 

To lard the shambles, barbels bred 
To kiss our hands ; nor do we wish 
For Pollio's lampreys in our dish. 

If we can meet, and so confer, 

Both by a shining salt-cellar, 50 

And have our roof, 
Although not arch'd, yet weather-proof, 

And ceiling free 
From that cheap candle-baudery; 
We'll eat our bean with that full mirth, 55 

As we were lords of all the earth. 

Well, then, on what seas we are toss'd, 
Our comfort is, we can't be lost. 

Let the winds drive 
Our bark, yet she will keep alive 60 

Amidst the deeps ; 
'Tis constancy, my Wickes, which keeps 
The pinnace up ; which though she errs 
I' th' seas, she saves her passengers. 

Say, we must part ; sweet mercy bless 65 

Us both i' th' sea, camp, wilderness ! 

Can we so far 
Stray to become less circular 

Than we are now ? 
No, no, that self-same heart, that vow 7° 

Which made us one, shall ne'er undo, 
Or ravel so, to make us two. 



HESPERIDES. 71 

Live in thy peace ; as for myself, 
When I am bruised on the shelf 

Of time, and show 75 

My locks behung with frost and snow ; 

When with the rheum, 
The cough, the ptisic, I consume 
Unto an almost nothing ; then, 
The ages fled, I'll call again, 80 

And with a tear compare these last 
Lame and bad times with those are past, 

While Baucis by, 
My old lean wife, shall kiss it dry ; 

And so we'll sit 85 

By th' fire, foretelling snow and slit, 
And weather by our aches, grown 
Now old enough to be our own 

True calendars, as puss's ear 

Wash'd o'er 's to tell what change is near ; 9° 

Then, to assuage 
The gripings of the chine by age, 

I'll call my young 
lulus to sing such a song 

I made upon my Julia's breast, 95 

And of her blush at such a feast. 

Then shall he read that flow'r of mine 
Enclos'd within a crystal shrine ; 

A primrose next. 
A piece then of a higher text. 100 



Thus frantic crazy man, God wot, 
I'll call to mind things half forgot; 



72 HESPERIDES. 

And oft between 1 1 5 

Repeat the times that I have seen ; 

Thus ripe with tears, 
And twisting my lulus' hairs, 
Doting, I'll weep and say, In truth, 
Baucis, these were my sins of youth. 120 

Then next I'll cause my hopeful lad, 
If a wild apple can be had 

To crown the hearth, 
Lar thus conspiring with our mirth, 

Then to infuse 125 

Our browner ale into the cruse ; 
Which, sweetly spic'd, we'll first carouse 
Unto the genius of the house. 

Then the next health to friends of mine, 

Loving the brave Burgundian wine, T 3° 

High sons of pith, 
Whose fortunes I have frolick'd with ; 

Such as could well 
Bear up the magic bough and spell ; 
And dancing 'bout the mystic Thyrse, 135 

Give up the just applause to verse. 

To those, and then again to thee, 
We'll drink, my Wickes, until we be 

Plump as the cherry, 
Though not so fresh, yet full as merry 140 

As the cricket, 
The untam'd heifer, or the prrcket, 
Until our tongues shall tell our ears 
Ware younger by a score of years. 



HESPERIDES. 73 

Thus, till we see the fire less shine 145 

From th' embers than the kitling's eyne, 

We'll still sit up, 
Sphering about the wassail cup 

To all those times 
Which gave me honor for my rhymes. 152 

The coal once spent, we'll then to bed, 
Far more than night-bewearied. 

337. A SHORT HYMN TO VENUS. 

Goddess, I do love a girl 

Ruby-lipp'd and tooth'd with pearl ; 

If so be I may but prove 

Lucky in this maid I love, 

I will promise there shall be 5 

Myrtles offer'd up to thee. 

345. THE POWER IN THE PEOPLE. 

Let kings command, and do the best they may, 
The saucy subjects still will bear the sway. 

359. TO THE RIGHT HONORABLE PHILIP, EARL 
OF PEMBROKE AND MONTGOMERY. 

How dull and dead are books, that cannot show 

A Prince of Pembroke, and that Pembroke you ! 

You, who are high born, and a lord no less 

Free by your fate than fortune's mightiness, 

Who hug our poems, honor'd sir, and then 5 

The paper gild, and laureate the pen. 

Nor suffer you the poets to sit cold, 

But warm their wits, and turn their lines to gold. 



74 HESPERIDES. 

Others there be, who righteously will swear 
Those smooth-pac'd numbers amble everywhere, 
And these brave measures go a stately trot ; 
Love those like these ; regard, reward them not. 
But you, my lord, are one whose hand along 
Goes with your mouth, or does outrun your tongue, 
Paying before you praise, and cock'ring wit, 
Give both the gold and garland unto it. 

360. A HYMN TO JUNO. 

Stately goddess, do thou please, 
Who art chief at marriages, 
But to dress the bridal bed, 
When my love and I shall wed ; 
And a peacock proud shall be 
Offer'd up by us to thee. 

366. UPON HIMSELF. 

Thou shalt not all die ; for while Love's fire shines 
Upon his altar, men shall read thy lines ; 
And learn'd musicians shall, to honor Herrick's 
Fame, and his name, both set and sing his lyrics. 

367. UPON WRINKLES. 

Wrinkles no more are, or no less 
Than beauty turn'd to sowerness. 

371. HIS LACHRIM^; or, MIRTH TURN'D TO 
MOURNING. 

Call me no more, 
As heretofore, 



HESPERIDES. 75 

The music of a feast ; 

Since now, alas ! 

The mirth that was 5 

In me, is dead or ceas'd. 

Before I went 

To banishment, 
Into the loathed West, 

I could rehearse 10 

A lyric verse, 
And speak it with the best. 

But time, Ai me ! 

Has laid, I see, 
My organ fast asleep ; 15 

And turn'd my voice 

Into the noise 
Of those that sit and weep. 



375. TO THE MOST FAIR AND LOVELY MISTRESS 
ANNE SOAME, NOW LADY ABDIE. 

So smell those odors that do rise 

From out the wealthy spiceries ; 

So smells the flow'r of blooming clove, 

Or roses smother'd in the stove ; 

So smells the air of spiced wine, 5 

Or essences of jessamine ; 

So smells the breath about the hives, 

When well the work of honey thrives, 

And all the busy factors come 

Laden with wax and honey home ; 10 

So smell those neat and woven bowers, 

All over-arch'd with orange flowers, 



76 HESPERIDES. 

And almond blossoms, that do mix 

To make rich these aromatics ; 

So smell those bracelets, and those bands 15 

Of amber chaf'd between the hands, 

When thus enkindled, they transpire 

A noble perfume from the fire. 

The wine of cherries, and to these 

The cooling breath of respasses, 20 

The smell of morning's milk and cream, 

Butter of cowslips mix'd with them, 

Of roasted warden, or bak'd pear, 

These are not to be reckon'd here ; 

Whenas the meanest part of her 25 

Smells like the maiden-pomander. 

Thus sweet she smells, or what can be 

More lik'd by her, or lov'd by me. 



386. A VOW TO MARS. 

Store of courage to me grant, 
Now I'm turn'd a combatant ; 
Help me, so that I my shield, 
Fighting, lose not in the field. 
That's the greatest shame of all 
That in warfare can befall. 
Do but this, and there shall be 
Offer'd up a wolf to thee. 



387. TO HIS MAID PREW. 

These summer birds did with thy master stay 
The times of warmth, but then they flew away, 
Leaving their poet, being now grown old, 
Expos'd to all the coming winter's cold. 



HESPERIDES. 77 

But thou, kind Prew, did'st with my fates abide 5 

As well the winter's as the summer's tide ; 
For which thy love, live with thy master here, 
Not one, but all the seasons of the year. 

391. HOW PANSIES, or HEARTEASE, CAME FIRST. 

Frolic virgins once these were, 

Over-loving, living here ; 

Being here their ends deny'd, 

Ran for sweethearts mad, and died. 

Love, in pity of their tears, 5 

And their loss in blooming years, 

For their restless here-spent hours 

Gave them heartsease turned to flow'rs. 

393. LAR'S PORTION AND THE POET'S PART. 

At my homely country-seat, 

I have there a little wheat, 

Which I work to meal, and make 

Therewithal a holy-cake ; 

Part of which I give to Lar, 5 

Part is my peculiar. 

413. THE MAD MAID'S SONG. 

Good morrow to the day so fair ; 

Good morning, sir, to you ; 
Good morrow to mine own torn hair, 

Bedabbled with the dew. 

Good morning to this primrose too ; 5 

Good morrow to each maid 
That will with flowers the tomb bestrew 

Wherein my love is laid. 



78 HESPERIDES. 

Ah ! woe is me, woe, woe is me, 

Alack, and well-a-day ! 10 

For pity, sir, find out that bee 

Which bore my love away. 

I'll seek him in your bonnet brave ; 

I'll seek him in your eyes ; 
Nay, now I think th' ave made his grave 15 

I'th' bed of strawberries. 

I'll seek him there ; I know, ere this, 

The cold, cold earth doth shake him ; 

But I will go, or send a kiss 

By you, sir, to awake him. 20 

Pray hurt him not ; though he be dead, 
He knows well who do love him ; 

And who with green turfs rear his head, 
And who do rudely move him. 

He's soft and tender, pray take heed : 25 

With bands of cowslips bind him, 

And bring him home ; but 'tis decreed, 
That I shall never find him. 



420. UPON BRIDGET. EPIG. 

Of four teeth only Bridget was possess'd ; 
Two she spat out, a cough forc'd out the rest. 



421. TO SYCAMORES. 

I'm sick of love ; O let me lie 
Under your shades, to sleep or die ! 
Either is welcome ; so I have 
Or here my bed, or here my grave. 



HESPERIDES. 79 

Why do you sigh and sob, and keep 5 

Time with the tears that I do weep ? 

Say, have ye sense, .or do you prove 

What crucifixions are in love ? 

I know ye do ; and that's the why 

You sigh for love as well as I. IO 



436. UPON PARSON BEANS. 

Old Parson Beans hunts six days of the week, 
And on the seventh he has his notes to seek ; 
Six days he hollows so much breath away, 
That on the seventh he can nor preach or pray. 



439- POLICY IN PRINCES. 

That Princes may possess a surer seat, 

'Tis fit they make no One with them too great. 

442. TO DAISIES, NOT TO SHUT SO SOON. 

Shut not so soon ; the dull-ey'd night 

Has not as yet begun 
To make a seizure on the light, 

Or to seal up the sun. 

No marigolds yet closed are, 5 

No shadows great appear ; 
Nor doth the early shepherd's star 

Shine like a spangle here. 

Stay but till my Julia close 

Her life begetting eye ; I0 

And let the whole world then dispose 

Itself to live or die. 



HESPERWES. 

443. TO THE LITTLE SPINNERS. 

Ye pretty huswives, would ye know 
The work that I would put ye to ? 
This, this it should be, for to spin 
A lawn for me, so fine and thin 
As it might serve me for my skin. 
For cruel love has me so whipp'd, 
That of my skin I all am stripp'd, 
And shall despair that any art 
Can ease the rawness or the smart, 
Unless you skin again each part. 
Which mercy, if you will but do, 
1 call all maids to witness to 
What here I promise, that no broom 
Shall now, or ever after, come 
To wrong a Spinner or her loom. 

444. OBERON'S PALACE. 
[Placed after 223.] 

446. TO JULIA IN THE TEMPLE. 

Besides us two, i' th' Temple here's not one 

To make up now a congregation. 

Let's to the altar of perfumes then go, 

And say short prayers : and when we have done so, 

Then we shall see, how in a little space 

Saints will come in to fill each pew and place. 

447. TO CENONE. 

What Conscience, say, is it in thee 

When I a heart had one, 
To take away that heart from me, 

And to retain thy own ? 



H&SP&RIDES. 81 

For shame or pity, now incline 5 

To play a loving part ; 
Either to send me kindly thine, 

Or give me back my heart. 

Covet not both ; but if thou dost 

Resolve to part with neither, 10 

Why ! yet to show that thou art just, 

Take me and mine together. 

451. TO GROVES. 

Ye silent shades, whose each tree here 

Some relique of a saint doth wear, 

Who for some sweetheart's sake did prove 

The fire and martyrdom of love : 

Here is the legend of those saints 5 

That died for love, and their complaints ; 

Their wounded hearts and names we find 

Encarv'd upon the leaves and rind. 

Give way, give way to me, who come 

Scorch'd with the self-same martyrdom ; 10 

And have deserv'd as much, Love knows, 

As to be canoniz'd 'mongst those 

Whose deeds and deaths here written are 

Within your greeny calendar. 

By all those virgins' fillets hung 15 

Upon your boughs, and requiems sung 

For saints and souls departed hence, 

Here honor'd still with frankincense ; 

By all those tears that have been shed 

As a drink-offering to the dead ; 20 

By all those true love-knots that be 

With mottoes carv'd on every tree ; 

By sweet St. Phillis, pity me ! 



82 HESPERIDES. 

By dear St. Iphis and the rest 

Of all those other saints now blest. 25 

Me, me forsaken, here admit 

Among your myrtles to be writ ; 

That my poor name may have the glory 

To live rememb'red in your story. 



452. AN EPITAPH UPON A VIRGIN. 

Here a solemn fast we keep, 
While all beauty lies asleep, 
Hush'd be all things, no noise here 
But the toning of a tear ; 
Or a sigh of such as bring 
Cowslips for her covering. 



462. THE PLUNDER. 

I am of all bereft, 
Save but some few beans left, 
Whereof, at last, to make 
For me and mine a cake ; 
Which eaten, they and I 
Will say our grace, and die. 



469. TO BLOSSOMS. 

Fair pledges of a fruitful tree, 
Why do ye fall so fast ? 
Your date is not so past, 

But you may stay yet here a while, 
To blush and gently smile, 
And go at last. 



HESPERIDES. 83 

What, were ye born to be 

An hour or half's delight, 

And so to bid good-night ? 
'Twas pity Nature brought ye forth, i 

Merely to show your worth, 
And lose you quite. 

But you are lovely leaves, where we 

May read how soon things have 

Their end, though ne'er so brave ; i 5 

And after they have shown their pride 

Like you a while, they glide 
Into the grave. 

475- THE OLD WIVES' PRAYER. 

Holy-rood, come forth and shield 

Us i'th' city and the field : 

Safely guard us, now and aye, 

From the blast that burns by day, 

And those sounds that us affright 5 

In the dead of dampish night ; 

Drive all hurtful fiends us fro, 

By the time the cocks first crow. 

477- UPON HIS DEPARTURE HENCE. 

Thus I 

Pass by, 

And die, 

As one 

Unknown c 

And gone : 

I'm made 

A shade, 



84 HESPERIDES. 

And laid 
I'th' grave, 
There have 
My cave : 
Where tell 
I dwell, 
Farewell. 



478. THE WASSAIL. 

Give way, give way, ye gates, and win 
An easy blessing to your bin 
And basket, by our ent'ring in. 

May both with manchet stand replete, 

Your larders, too, so hung with meat, 5 

That though a thousand, thousand eat, 

Yet ere twelve moons shall whirl about 
Their silv'ry spheres, there's none may doubt 
But more's sent in than was serv'd out. 

Next, may your dairies prosper so 10 

As that your pans no ebb may know ; 
But if they do, the more to flow 

Like to a solemn sober stream, 

Bank'd all with lilies, and the cream 

Of sweetest cowslips filling them. 15 

Then may your plants be press'd with fruit, 
Nor bee or hive you have be mute, 
But sweetly sounding like a lute. 

Next, may your duck and teeming hen 

Both to the cock's tread say Amen, 20 

And for their two eggs render ten. 



HESPERWES. 85 

Last, may your harrows, shares, and ploughs, 
Your stacks, your stocks, your sweetest mows, 
All prosper by our virgin-vows. 

Alas ! we bless, but see none here, 25 

That brings us either ale or beer ; 
In a dry house all things are near. 

Let's leave a longer time to wait, 

Where rust and cobwebs bind the gate ; 

And all live here with needy fate ; 3° 

Where chimneys do for ever weep 

For want of warmth, and stomachs keep 

With noise the servants' eyes from sleep. 

It is in vain to sing, or stay 

Our free feet here, but we'll away; 35 

Yet to the Lares this we'll say : 

The time will come when you'll be sad, 
And reckon this for fortune bad, 
T'ave lost the good ye might have had. 



486. UPON JULIA'S HAIR FILL'D WITH DEW. 

Dew sat on Julia's hair, 

And spangled too, 
Like leaves that laden are 

With trembling dew ; 
Or glitter'd to my sight 

As when the beams 
Have their reflected light 

Danc'd by the streams. 



86 HESPERIDES. 

488. LOSS FROM THE LEAST. 

Great men by small means oft are overthrown ; 
He's lord of thy life who contemns his own. 

490. SHAME NO STATIST. 

Shame is a bad attendant to a state ; 

He rents his crown that fears the people's hate. 

499. UPON A FLY. 

A golden fly one show'd to me, 

Clos'd in a box of ivory, 

Where both seem'd proud — the fly to have 

His burial in an ivory grave ; 

The ivory took state to hold 5 

A corpse as bright as burnish'd gold. 

One fate had both ; both equal grace, 

The buried and the burying-place. 

Not Virgil's gnat, to whom the Spring 

All flowers sent to 'is burying ; 10 

Not Martial's bee, which in a bead 

Of amber quick was buried ; 

Nor that fine worm that does inter 

Herself i' th' silken sepulchre ; 

Nor my rare Phil, that lately was 15 

With lilies tomb'd up in a glass, 

More honour had than this same fly, 

Dead, and clos'd up in ivory. 

503. UPON PARRAT. 

Parrat protests 'tis he, and only he, 

Can teach a man the Art of ??iemory ; 

Believe him not, for he forgot it quite, 

Being drunk, who 'twas that can'd his ribs last night. 



HESPERIDES. 87 

517. HIS WINDING-SHEET. 

Come thou, who art the wine and wit 

Of all I've writ ; 
The grace, the glory, and the best 

Piece of the rest ; 
Thou art of what I did intend 5 

The all and end ; 
And what was made, was made to meet 

Thee, thee, my sheet ; 
Come then, and be to my chaste side 

Both bed and bride. 10 

We two, as reliques left, will have 

One rest, one grave ; 
And, hugging close, we will not fear 

Lust ent'ring here, 
Where all desires are dead or cold, l S 

As is the mould ; 
And all affections are forgot, 

Or trouble not. 
Here, here the slaves and pris'ners be 

From shackles free, 20 

And weeping widows, long oppress'd, 

Do here find rest. 
The wronged client ends his laws 

Here, and his cause ; 
Here those long suits of Chancery lie 25 

Quiet, or die, 
And all Star Chamber bills do cease, 

Or hold their peace. 
Here needs no Court for our Request, 

Where all are best, 3° 

All wise, all equal, and all just 

Alike i'th' dust. 



HESPERIDES. 

Nor need we here to fear the frown 

Of court or crown, 
Where Fortune bears no sway o'er things, 35 

There all are kings. 
In this securer place we'll keep, 

As lull'd asleep ; 
Or for a little time we'll lie, 

As robes laid by, 40 

To be another day re-worn, 

Turn'd, but not torn ; 
Or like old testaments ingross'd, 

Lock'd up, not lost ; 
And for a while lie here conceal'd, 45 

To be reveal'd 
Next, at that great Platonic Year, 

And then meet here. 



523. TO PHILLIS TO LOVE, AND LIVE WITH HIM. 

Live, live with me, and thou shalt see 
The pleasures I'll prepare for thee. 
What sweets the country can afford 
Shall bless thy bed, and bless thy board. 
The soft sweet moss shall be thy bed, 
With crawling woodbine overspread ; 
By which the silver-shedding streams 
Shall gently melt thee into dreams. 
Thy clothing next shall be a gown 
Made of the fleece's purest down ; 
The tongues of kids shall be thy meat, 
Their milk thy drink, and thou shalt eat 
The paste of filberts for thy bread, 
With cream of cowslips buttered. 



HESPERIDES. 89 

Thy f easting-tables shall be hills 15 

With daisies spread, and daffodils ; 

Where thou shalt sit, and redbreast by 

For meat shall give thee melody. 

I'll give thee chains and carcanets 

Of primroses and violets. 2 ° 

A bag and bottle thou shalt have, 

That richly wrought, and this as brave ; 

So that as either shall express 

The wearer's no mean shepherdess. 

At shearing-time and yearly wakes, 25 

When Themilis his pastime makes, 

There thou shalt be, and be the wit, 

Nay, more, the feast, and grace of it. 

On holy days, when virgins meet 

To dance the heyes with nimble feet, 30 

Thou shalt come forth, and then appear 

The Queen of Roses for that year ; 

And having danc'd, 'bove all the best, 

Carry the garland from the rest. 

In wicker baskets maids shall bring 35 

To thee, my dearest shepharling, 

The blushing apple, bashful pear, 

And shame-fac'd plum, all simp'ring there. 

Walk in the groves, and thou shalt find 

The name of Phillis in the rind 40 

Of every straight and smooth-skin tree ; 

Where, kissing that, I'll twice kiss thee. 

To thee a sheep-hook I will send, 

Beprank'd with ribands, to this end, 

This, this alluring hook might be 45 

Less for to catch a sheep than me. 

Thou shalt have possets, wassails fine, 

Not made of ale, but spiced wine ; 



90 HESPERIDES. 

To make thy maids and self free mirth, 

All sitting near the glitt'ring hearth. 50 

Thou sha't have ribbands, roses, rings, 

Gloves, garters, stockings, shoes, and strings 

Of winning colors, that shall move 

Others to lust, but me to love. 

These, nay, and more, thine own shall be, 55 

If thou wilt love and live with me. 



525. UPON MISTRESS SUSANNA SOUTHWELL HER 
CHEEKS. 

Rare are thy cheeks, Susanna, which do show 
Ripe cherries smiling, while that others blow. 



526. UPON HER EYES. 

Clear are her eyes, 

Like purest skies ; 
Discovering from thence 

A baby there 

That turns each sphere, 
Like an Intelligence. 



527. UPON HER FEET. 

Her pretty feet 
Like snails did creep 

A little out, and then, 
As if they started at bo-peep, 

Did soon draw in again. 



HESPEKIDES. 91 

532. A VOW TO MINERVA. 

Goddess, I begin an art ; 

Come thou in with thy best part, 

For to make the texture lie 

Each way smooth and civilly ; 

And a broad-fac'd owl shall be $ 

Offer'd up with vows to thee. 



538. ILL GOVERNMENT. 

Preposterous is that government, and rude, 
When kings obey the wilder multitude. 



541. TO JULIA, THE FLAMINICA DIALIS, OR QUEEN- 
PRIEST. 

Thou know'st, my Julia, that it is thy turn 

This morning's incense to prepare and burn. 

The chaplet and inarculum here be, 

With the white vestures, all attending thee. 

This day the Queen-Priest thou art made, t'appease 5 

Love for our very many trespasses. 

One chief transgression is, among the rest, 

Because with flowers her temple was not dress'd ; 

The next, because her altars did not shine 

With daily fires ; the last, neglect of wine : 10 

For which, her wrath is gone forth to consume 

Us all, unless preserv'd by thy perfume. 

Take then thy censer ; put in fire, and thus, 

O pious Priestess ! make a peace for us. 

For our neglect, Love did our death decree; 15 

That we escape, redemption comes by thee. 



92 HESPERIDES. 

546. AN ODE TO SIR CLIPSEBY CREW. 

Here we securely live, and eat 

The cream of meat ; 
And keep eternal fires, 
By which we sit, and do divine 

As wine 5 

And rage inspires. 

If full, we charm ; then call upon 
Anacreon 
To grace the frantic thyrse : 
And having drunk, we raise a shout 10 

Throughout, 
To praise his verse. 

Then cause we Horace to be read, 
Which sung or said, 
A goblet, to the brim, 1 5 

Of lyric wine, both swell'd and crown'd, 
Around 
We quaff to him. 

Thus, thus we live, and spend the hours 

In wine and flowers ; 20 

And make the frolic year, 
The month, the week, the instant day, 
To stay 
The longer here. 

Come then, brave knight, and see the cell 25 

Wherein I dwell, 
And my enchantments too ; 
Which love and noble freedom is, 
And this 
Shall fetter you. 3° 



HESPERIDES. 93 

Take horse, and come ; or be so kind 
To send your mind, 
Though but in numbers few, 
And I shall think I have the heart, 

Or part, 35 

Of Clipseby Crew. 

547- TO HIS WORTHY KINSMAN, MR. STEPHEN 
SOAME. 

Nor is my number full, till I inscribe 

Thee, sprightly Soame, one of my righteous tribe : 

A tribe of one lip-leaven, and of one 

Civil behavior and religion : 

A stock of saints, where every one doth wear 5 

A stole of white, and canonized here ; 

Among which holies be thou ever known, 

Brave kinsman, mark'd out with the whiter stone ; 

Which seals thy glory, since I do prefer 

Thee here in my eternal calendar. 10 

548. TO HIS TOMB-MAKER. 

Go I must ; when I am gone, 

Write but this upon my stone : 

Chaste I liv'd, without a wife, 

That's the story of my life. 

Strewings need none, every flower 5 

Is in this word, bachelor. 

549- GREAT SPIRITS SUPERVIVE. 

Our mortal parts may wrapp'd in cere-cloths lie ; 
Great spirits never with their bodies die. 



94 HESPERIDES. 

554. HIS CONTENT IN THE COUNTRY. 

Here, here I live with what my board 
Can with the smallest cost afford ; 
Though ne'er so mean the viands be, 
They well content my Prew and me : 
Or pea or bean, or wort or beet, 
Whatever comes, content makes sweet. 
Here we rejoice because no rent 
We pay for our poor tenement, 
Wherein we rest, and never fear 
The landlord or the usurer. 
The quarter-day does ne'er affright 
Our peaceful slumbers in the night ; 
We eat our own, and batten more 
Because we feed on no man's score ; 
But pity those whose flanks grow great 
Swell'd with the lard of others' meat. 
We bless our fortunes when we see 
Our own beloved privacy ; 
And like our living, where w'are known 
To very few, or else to none. 

556. ON HIMSELF. 

Some parts may perish, die thou canst not all 
The most of thee shall scape the funeral. 



577. THE APPARITION OF HIS MISTRESS CALLING 
HIM TO ELYSIUM. 



Desunt nonmdla 



Come then, and like two doves with silv'ry wings, 
Let our souls fly to th' shades, where ever springs 



HESPERIDES. 95 

Sit smiling in the meads ; where balm and oil, 

Roses and cassia, crown the untill'd soil ; 

Where no disease reigns, or infection comes 5 

To blast the air, but amber-greece and gums. 

This, that, and ev'ry thicket doth transpire 

More sweet than storax from the hallowed fire ; 

Where ev'ry tree a wealthy issue bears 

Of fragrant apples, blushing plums, or pears, 10 

And all the shrubs, with sparkling spangles, shew 

Like morning sunshine, tinselling the dew. 

Here in green meadows sits eternal May, 

Purfling the margents, while perpetual day 

So double gilds the air, as that no night 15 

Can ever rust tlr enamel of the light ; 

Here naked younglings, handsome striplings, run 

Their goals for virgins' kisses ; which when done, 

Then unto dancing forth the learned round 

Commix'd they meet, with endless roses crown'd. 20 

And here we'll sit on primrose-banks, and see 

Love's chorus led by Cupid ; and we'll be 

Two loving followers too unto the grove 

Where poets sing the stories of our love : 

There thou shalt hear divine Musaeus sing 25 

Of Hero and Leander ; then I'll bring 

Thee to the stand, where honour'd Homer reads 

His Odysseys and his high Iliads ; 

About whose throne the crowd of poets throng 

To hear the incantation of his tongue : 30 

To Linus, then to Pindar ; and that done, 

I'll bring thee, Herrick, to Anacreon, 

Quaffing his full-crown 'd bowls of burning wine, 

And in his raptures speaking lines of thine, 

Like to his subject ; and as his frantic 35 

Looks show him truly Bacchanalian like, 



96 HESPERIDES. 

Besmear'd with grapes, welcome he shall thee thither, 

Where both may rage, both drink and dance together. 

Then stately Virgil, witty Ovid, by 

Whom fair Corinna sits, and doth comply 4° 

With ivory wrists his laureate head, and steeps 

His eye in dew of kisses while he sleeps ; 

Then soft Catullus, sharp-fang'd Martial, 

And towering Lucan, Horace, Juvenal, 

And snaky Persius ; these, and those whom rage 45 

Dropp'd from the jars of heaven, fill'd t' engage 

All times unto their frenzies ; thou shalt there 

Behold them in a spacious theatre. 

Among which glories, crown'd with sacred bays 

And flatt'ring ivy, two recite their plays, 50 

Beaumont and Fletcher, swans, to whom all ears 

Listen, while they, like sirens in their spheres, 

Sing their Evadne : and still more for thee 

There yet remains to know than thou canst see 

By glimm'ring of a fancy; do but come, 55 

And there I'll show thee that capacious room 

In which thy father, Jonson, now is plac'd, 

As in a globe of radiant fire and grac'd 

To be in that orb crown'd, that doth include 

Those prophets of the former magnitude, 60 

And he one chief. But hark, I hear the cock, 

The bellman of the night, proclaim the clock 

Of late struck one ; and now I see the prime 

Of daybreak from the pregnant east, 'tis time 

I vanish ; more I had to say, 65 

But night determines here. Away ! 



HESPERIDES. 97 



579. UPON URLES. EPIG. 

Urles had the gout so, that he could not stand 
Then from his feet it shifted to his hand ; 
When 'twas in 's feet his charity was small ; 
Now 'tis in 's hand, he gives no alms at all. 



582. THE PRIMROSE. 

Ask me why I send you here 
This sweet Infanta of the year ; 

Ask me why I send to you 
This Primrose, thus bepearl'd with dew: 

I will whisper to your ears, 5 

The sweets of love are mix'd with tears. 

Ask me why this flower does show 
So yellow-green, and sickly too ; 

Ask me why the stalk is weak, 
And bending, yet it does not break : J ° 

I will answer, these discover 
What fainting hopes are in a lover. 



586. TO JULIA. 

The saints-bell calls ; and Julia, I must read 
The proper lessons for the saints now dead ; 
To grace which service, Julia, there shall be 
One holy collect said or sung for thee. 
Dead when thou art, dear Julia, thou shalt have 
A trental sung by virgins o'er thy grave ; 
Meantime we two will sing the dirge of these, 
Who, dead, deserve our best remembrances. 



98 HESPERIDES. 



598. UPON THE TROUBLESOME TIMES. 

O times most bad ! 
Without the scope 
Of hope 
Of better to be had ! 

Where shall I go, 
Or whither run 
To shun 
This public overthrow ? 

No places are, 
(This I am sure) 
Secure 
In this our wasting war. 

Some storms w'ave past ; 
Yet we must all 
Down fall, 
And perish at the last. 



603. SHIPWRACK. 

He who has suffer'd shipwrack, fears to sail 
Upon the seas, though with a gentle gale. 



605. TO HIS BOOK. 

Be bold, my book, nor be abash'd, or fear 
The cutting thumb-nail, or the brow severe ; 
But by the Muses swear, all here is good, 
If but well read ; or, ill read, understood. 



HESPERIDES. 99 

606. HIS PRAYER TO BEN JONSON. 

When I a verse shall make, 

Know I have pray'd thee, 
For old religion's sake, 

Saint Ben, to aid me. 

Make the way smooth for me, 5 

When I, thy Herrick, 
Honoring thee, on my knee 

Offer my Lyric. 

Candles I'll give to thee, 

And a new altar ; 10 

And thou, Saint Ben, shalt be 

Writ in my psalter. 

607. POVERTY AND RICHES. 

Give want her welcome, if she comes ; we find 
Riches to be but burthens to the mind. 

608. AGAIN. 

Who with a little cannot be content 
Endures an everlasting punishment. 

610. LAWS. 

When laws full power have to sway, we see 
Little or no part there of tyranny. 

618. TO THE MAIDS TO WALK ABROAD. 

Come, sit we under yonder tree, 
Where merry as the maids we'll be ; 



100 HESPERIDES. 

And as on primroses we sit, 

We'll venture, if we can, at wit, 

If not, at draw-gloves we will play, 5 

So spend some minutes of the day ; 

Or else spin out the thread of sands, 

Playing at questions and commands, 

Or tell what strange tricks love can do 

By quickly making one of two. 10 

Thus we will sit and talk, but tell 

No cruel truths of Philomel, 

Or Phillis, whom hard fate forc'd on 

To kill herself for Demophon. 

But fables we'll relate — how Jove 15 

Put on all shapes to get a love, 

As now a satyr, then a swan, 

A bull but then, and now a man. 

Next, we will act how young men woo, 

And sigh and kiss as lovers do ; 20 

And talk of brides, and who shall make 

That wedding-smock, this bridal cake, 

That dress, this sprig, that leaf, this vine, 

That smooth and silken columbine. 

This done, we'll draw lots who shall buy 25 

And gild the bays and rosemary ; 

What posies for our wedding rings, 

What gloves we'll give, and ribanings ; 

And smiling at ourselves, decree 

Who then the joining priest shall be ; 30 

What short sweet prayers shall be said, 

And how the posset shall be made 

With cream of lilies, not of kine, 

And maiden's-blush for spiced wine. 

Thus having talk'd, we'll next commend 35 

A kiss to each, and so we'll end. 



HESPERIDES. 101 



619. HIS OWN EPITAPH. 



As wearied pilgrims, once possess'd 
Of long'd-for lodging, go to rest ; 
So I, now having rid my way, 
Fix here my button'd staff and stay. 
Youth, I confess, hath me misled, 
But age hath brought me right to bed. 



621. THE NIGHT-PIECE, TO JULIA. 

Her eyes the glow-worm lend thee, 
The shooting stars attend thee ; 

And the elves also, 

Whose little eyes glow 
Like the sparks of fire, befriend thee. 5 

No Will-o'-th'-Wisp mislight thee, 
Nor snake or slow-worm bite thee ; 

But on, on thy way, 

Not making a stay, 
Since ghost there's none to affright thee. 10 

Let not the dark thee cumber ; 

What though the moon does slumber ? 

The stars of the night 

Will lend thee their light, 
Like tapers clear without number. 15 

Then, Julia, let me woo thee, 
Thus, thus to come unto me ; 

And when I shall meet 

Thy silv'ry feet, 
My soul I'll pour into thee. 20 



102 HESPERIDES. 



625. GLORY. 

I make no haste to have my numbers read ; 
Seldom comes glory till a man be dead. 



626. POETS. 

Wantons we are ; and though our words be such, 
Our lives do differ from our lines by much. 



629. HIS CHARGE TO JULIA AT HIS DEATH. 

Dearest of thousands, now the time draws near 

That with my lines my life must full-stop here. 

Cut off thy hairs, and let thy tears be shed 

Over my turf, when I am buried. 

Then for effusions, let none wanting be, 

Or other rites that do belong to me ; 

As love shall help thee, when thou dost go hence 

Unto thy everlasting residence. 

636. TO HIS LOVELY MISTRESSES. 

One night i' th' year, my dearest beauties, come 
And bring those due drink-offerings to my tomb ; 
When thence ye see my reverend ghost to rise, 
And there to lick th' effused sacrifice, 
Though paleness be the livery that I wear, 
Look ye not wan or colorless for fear ; 
Trust me, I will not hurt ye, or once show 
The least grim look, or cast a frown on you ; 
Nor shall the tapers, when I'm there, burn blue. 
This I may do, perhaps, as I glide by, 
Cast on my girls a glance, and loving eye ; 



HESPERIDES. 103 



Or fold mine arms, and sigh, because I've lost 
The world so soon, and in it you the most : 
Than these, no fears more on your fancies fall, 
Though then I smile, and speak no words at all. 



645. THE HAG. 

The hag is astride 

This night for to ride, 
The devil and she together ; 

Through thick and through thin, 

Now out and then in, 5 

Though ne'er so foul be the weather. 

A thorn or a burr 

She takes for a spur ; 
With a lash of a bramble she rides now, 

Through brakes and through briars, 10 

O'er ditches and mires, 
She follows the spirit that guides now. 

No beast for his food 

Dares now range the wood, 
But hush'd in his lair he lies lurking; 15 

While mischiefs by these, 

On land and on seas, 
At noon of night are a- working. 

The storm will arise 

And trouble the skies 20 

This night , and, more for the wonder, 

The ghost from the tomb 

Affrighted shall come, 
Call'd out by the clap of the thunder. 



104 HESPERIDES. 



653. TO SILVIA. 



I am holy while I stand 
Circumcross'd by thy pure hand 
But when that is gone, again 
I, as others, am profane. 



654. TO HIS CLOSET GODS. 

When I go hence, ye closet gods, I fear 

Never again to have ingression here ; 

Where I have had whatever things could be 

Pleasant and precious to my muse and me. 

Besides rare sweets, I had a book which none 

Could read the intext but myself alone ; 

About the cover of this book there went 

A curious-comely, clean compartiement ; 

And in the midst, to grace it more, Was set 

A blushing pretty-peeping rubelet ; 

But now 'tis clos'd, and being shut and seal'd, 

Be it, O be it never more reveal'd ! 

Keep here still, closet gods, 'fore whom I've set 

Oblations oit of sweetest marmelet. 



662. TO MOMUS. 

Who read'st this book that I have writ, 
And canst not mend, but carp at it ; 
By all the Muses, thou shalt be 
Anathema to it and me. 



HESPERIDES. 105 

664. THE COUNTRY LIFE. 

To the Honoured Mr. End. Porter, Groom of the Bedchamber 
to His Majesty. 

Sweet country life, to such unknown 

Whose lives are others', not their own, 

But, serving courts and cities, be 

Less happy, less enjoying thee. 

Thou never plough'st the ocean's foam 5 

To seek and bring rough pepper home ; 

Nor to the Eastern Ind dost rove 

To bring from thence the scorched clove ; 

Nor, with the loss of thy lov'd rest, 

Bring'st home the ingot from the West : 10 

No, thy ambition's masterpiece 

Flies no thought higher than a fleece ; 

Or how to pay thy hinds, and clear 

All scores, and so to end the year : 

But walk'st about thine own dear bounds, 15 

Not envying others' larger grounds, 

For well thou know'st, 'tis not th? extent 

Of land makes life, but sweet content. . 

When now the cock, the ploughman's horn, 

Calls forth the lily-wristed morn, . 20 

Then to thy corn-fields thou dost go. 

Which, though well soil'd, yet thou dost know 

That the best compost for the lands 

Is the wise master's feet and hands. 

There at the plough thou find'st thy team, 25 

With a hind whistling there to them, 

And cheer'st them up by singing how 

The kingdom's portion is the plough. 

This done, then to th' enamell'd meads 

Thou go'st, and as thy foot there treads, 30 



106 HESPERIDES. 

Thou seest a present godlike power 

Imprinted in each herb and flower, 

And smelPst the breath of great-eyed kine, 

Sweet as the blossoms of the vine. 

Here thou behold'st thy large sleek neat 35 

Unto the dewlaps up in meat ; 

And as thou look'st, the wanton steer, 

The heifer, cow, and ox draw near, 

To make a pleasing pastime there. 

These seen, thou goest to view thy flocks 40 

Of sheep, safe from the wolf and fox, 

And find'st their bellies there as full 

Of short sweet grass as backs with wool, 

And leav'st them, as they feed and fill, 

A shepherd piping on a hill. 45 

For sports, for pageantry, and plays, 

Thou hast thy eves and holydays, 

On which the young men and maids meet 

To exercise their dancing feet, 

Tripping the comely country round, 50 

With daffodils and daisies crown'd. 

Thy wakes, thy quintels, here thou hast, 

Thy Maypoles too with garlands grac'd, 

Thy morris-dance, thy Whitsun-ale, 

Thy shearing-feast, which never fail, 55 

Thy harvest home, thy wassail bowl, 

That's toss'd up after fox-i'-th'-hole, 

Thy mummeries, thy Twelf-tide kings 

And queens, thy Christmas revellings, 

Thy nut-brown mirth, thy russet wit, 60 

And no man pays too dear for it. 

To these thou hast thy times to go 

And trace the hare i' th' treacherous snow ; 

Thy witty wiles to draw, and get 



HESPERIDES. 107 

The lark into the trammel net ; 65 

Thou hast thy cockrood and thy glade 

To take the precious pheasant made ; 

Thy lime-twigs, snares, and pitfalls then, 

To catch the pilf ring birds, not men. 

O happy life ! if that their good 70 

The husbandmen but understood, 

Who all the day themselves do please, 

And younglings, with such sports as these, 

And, lying down, have nought t' affright 

Sweet sleep, that makes more short the night. 75 

Cater a desunt 



696. BITING OF BEGGARS. 

Who, railing, drives the lazar from his door, 
Instead of alms, sets dogs upon the poor. 



697. THE MAYPOLE. 

The Maypole is up, 
Now give me the cup, 

I'll drink to the garlands around it ; 
But first unto those 
Whose hands did compose 

The glory of flowers that crown'd it. 

A health to my girls 

Whose husbands may earls 
Or lords be, granting my wishes ; 

And when that ye wed 

To the bridal bed, 
Then multiply all, like to fishes. 



108 HESPERIDES. 

704. MEAN THINGS OVERCOME MIGHTY. 

By the weak'st means things mighty are o'erthrown 
He's lord of thy life, who contemns his own. 

706. UPON SMEATON. 

How could Luke Smeaton wear a shoe or boot, 
Who two and thirty corns had on a foot ? 

708. HOW ROSES CAME RED. 

Tis said, as Cupid danc'd among 
The gods, he down the nectar flung, 
Which, on the white rose being shed, 
Made it for ever after red. 

709. KINGS. 

Men are not born kings, but are men renown'd, 
Chose first, confirm'd next, and at last are crown'd. 

714. LAXARE FIBULAM. 

To loose the button is no less 
Than to cast off all bashfulness. 

716. NOT EVERY DAY FIT FOR VERSE. 

'Tis not ev'ry day that I 
Fitted am to prophesy ; 
No, but when the spirit fills 
The fantastic pannicles, 
Full of fier, then I write 
As the godhead doth indite. 



HESPERIDES. 109 

Thus inrag'd, my lines are hmTd, 

Like the Sybil's, through the world. 

Look how next the holy fire 

Either slakes, or doth retire ; 10 

So the fancy cools, till when 

That brave spirit comes again. 

719. TRUE SAFETY. 

'Tis not the walls or purple that defends 

A prince from foes, but 'tis his fort of friends. 

725. TO THE GENIUS OF HIS HOUSE. 

Command the roof, great Genius, and from thence 

Into this house pour down thy influence, 

That through each room a golden pipe may run 

Of living water by thy benison ; 

Fulfil the larders, and with strength'ning bread 5 

Be evermore these bins replenished. 

Next, like a bishop consecrate my ground, 

That lucky fairies here may dance their round ; 

And after that lay down some silver pence, 

The master's charge and care to recompense ; 10 

Charm then the chambers, make the beds for ease 

More than for peevish pining sicknesses ; 

Fix the foundation fast, and let the roof 

Grow old with time, but yet keep weather-proof. 

726. HIS GRANGE, OR PRIVATE WEALTH. 

Though clock, 
To tell how night draws hence, I've none, 

A cock 
I have to sing how day draws on : 



110 HESPERIDES. 

I have 5 

A maid, my Prew, by good luck sent, 

To save 
That little Fates me gave or lent : 

A hen 
I keep, which, creeking day by day, 10 

Tells when 
She goes her long white egg to lay : 

A goose 
I have, which, with a jealous ear, 

Lets loose 15 

Her tongue to tell what danger's near : 

A lamb 
I keep, tame, with my morsels fed, 

Whose dam 
An orphan left him, lately dead : 20 

A cat 
I keep, that plays about my house, 

Grown fat 
With eating many a miching mouse : 

To these 25 

A Tracy I do keep, whereby 

I please 
The more my rural privacy : 

W 7 hich are 
But toys, to give my heart some ease. 30 

Where care 
None is, slight things do lightly please. 

732. CHARON AND PHILOMEL: A DIALOGUE SUNG. 

Ph. Charon ! O gentle Charon ! let me woo thee, 

By tears and pity now to come unto me. 
Ch. What voice so sweet and charming do I hear ? 

Say, what thou art. Ph. I prithee first draw near. 



HESPERIDES. Ill 

Ch. A sound I hear, but nothing yet can see, 5 

Speak where thou art. Ph. O Charon, pity me ! 
I am a bird, and though no name I tell, 
My warbling note will say I'm Philomel. 

Ch. What's that to me ? I waft nor fish or fowls, 

Nor beasts, fond thing, but only human souls. 10 

Ph. Alas, for me ! Ch. Shame on thy witching note, 
That made me thus hoist sail, and bring my boat : 
But I'll return ; what mischief brought thee hither ? 

Ph. A deal of love, and much, much grief together. 

Ch. What's thy request ? Ph. That since she's now beneath 1 5 
Who fed my life, I'll follow her in death. 

Ch. And is that all ? I'm gone. Ph. By love, I pray thee. 

Ch. Talk not of love ; all pray, but few souls pay me. 

Ph. I'll give thee vows and tears. Ch. Can tears pay scores 
For mending sails, for patching boat and oars ? 20 

Ph. I'll beg a penny, or I'll sing so long 

Till thou shalt say I've paid thee with a song. 

Ch. Why, then begin, and all the while we make 
Our slothful passage o'er the Stygian lake, 
Thou and I'll sing to make these dull shades merry, 25 
Who else with tears would doubtless drown my ferry. 



753. OUR OWN SINS UNSEEN. 

Other men's sins we ever bear in mind ; 
None sees the fardel of his faults behi?id. 



763. THE WAKE. 

Come, Anthea, let us two 

Go to feast, as others do : 

Tarts and custards, creams and cakes, 

Are the junkets still at wakes; 



112 HESPERIDES. 

Unto which the tribes resort, 5 

Where the business is the sport. 

Morris-dancers thou shalt see, 

Marian, too, in pageantry ; 

And a mimic to devise 

Many grinning properties. 10 

Players there will be, and those 

Base in action as in clothes ; 

Yet with strutting they will please 

The incurious villages. 

Near the dying of the day 15 

There will be a cudgel-play, 

Where a coxcomb will be broke, 

Ere a good word can be spoke : 

But the anger ends all here, 

Drench'd in ale or drown'd in beer. 20 

Happy rustics, best content 

With the cheapest merriment, 

And possess no other fear 

Than to want the wake next year. 



781. UPON JULIA'S CLOTHES 

Whenas in silks my Julia goes, 

Then, then, methinks, how sweetly flows 

That liquefaction of her clothes. 

Next, when I cast mine eyes, and see 
That brave vibration, each way free 
O, how that glittering taketh me ! 



11ESPERIDES. 113 

784. UPON PREW, HIS MAID, 

In this little urn is laid 
Prewdence Baldwin, once my maid, 
From whose happy spark here let 
Spring the purple violet. 

786. CEREMONIES FOR CHRISTMAS. 

Come, bring with a noise, 

My merry merry boys, 
The Christmas log to the firing, 

While my good dame, she 

Bids ye all be free, 5 

And drink to your hearts' desiring. 

With the last year's brand 

Light the new block, and 
For good success in his spending, 

On your psalt'ries play, 10 

That sweet luck may 
Come while the log is a-teending. 

Drink now the strong beer, 

Cut the white loaf here, 
The while the meat is a-shredding; 15 

For the rare mince-pie, 

And the plums stand by, 
To fill the paste that's a-kneading. 

787. CHRISTMAS EVE: ANOTHER CEREMONY. 

Come, guard this night the Christmas-pie, 
That the thief, though ne'er so sly, 
With his flesh-hooks, don't come nigh 

To catch it 



114 HESPERIDES. 

From him who all alone sits there, 
Having his eyes still in his ear, 
And a deal of nightly fear, 

To watch it. 



788. ANOTHER TO THE MAIDS. 

Wash your hands, or else the fire 
Will not teend to your desire ; 
Unwash'd hands, ye maidens, know, 
Dead the fire, though ye blow. 



789. ANOTHER. 

Wassail the trees, that they may bear 
You many a plum and many a pear ; 
For more or less fruits they will bring 
As you do give them wassailing. 



813. THE MAIDEN-BLUSH. 

So look the mornings, when the sun 

Paints them with fresh vermilion ; 

So cherries blush, and Kathern pears, 

And apricocks in youthful years ; 

So corals look more lovely red, 5 

And rubies lately polished ; 

So purest diaper doth shine, 

Stain'd by the beams of claret wine ; 

As Julia looks when she doth dress 

Her either cheek with bashfulness. 10 



HESPERIDES. 115 



819. THE AMBER BEAD. 



I saw a fly within a bead 

Of amber cleanly buried ; 

The urn was little, but the room 

More rich than Cleopatra's tomb. 



827. COUNSEL. 

'Twas Caesar's saying : Kings no less conquerors are 
By their wise counsel, than they be by war. 



832. HIS LOSS. 

All has been plundered from me but my wit 
Fortune herself can lay no claim to it. 



840. UPON A MAID. 

Here she lies, in bed of spice, 
Fair as Eve in Paradise ; 
For her beauty, it was such 
Poets could not praise too much. 
/Virgins, come, and in a ring 
Her supremest requiem sing ; 
Then depart, but see ye tread 
Lightly, lightly o'er the dead. 



841. UPON LOVE. 

Love is a circle, and an endless sphere ; 
From good to good revolving, here and there. 



116 HESPERIDES. 



846. TO HIS BOOK. 

Make haste away, and let one be 

A friendly patron unto thee, 

Lest rapt from hence, I see thee lie 

Torn for the use of pastery ; 

Or see thy injur'd leaves serve well 

To make loose gowns for mackerel ; 

Or see the grocers, in a trice, 

Make hoods of thee to serve out spice. 



849. SOCIETY. 

Two things do make society to stand ; 

The first commerce is, and the next command. 



851. SATISFACTION FOR SUFFERINGS. 

For all our works a recompense is sure ; 

' Tis sweet to thi?ik o?i what tvas hard f endure. 



853. TO M. HENRY LAWES, THE EXCELLENT 
COMPOSER OF HIS LYRICS. 

Touch but thy lyre, my Harry, and I hear 

From thee some raptures of the rare Gotire ; 

Then, if thy voice commingle with the string, 

I hear in thee the rare Laniere to sing, 

Or curious Wilson. Tell me, canst thou be 

Less than Apollo, that usurp'st such three ? 

Three unto whom the whole world give applause ; 

Yet their three praises praise but one ; that's Lawes. 



HESPERIDES. 117 



855. THE BEDMAN, OR GRAVEMAKER. 

Thou hast made many houses for the dead ; 

When my lot calls me to be buried, 

For love or pity, prithee let there be 

I' th' churchyard made one tenement for me. 



856. TO ANTHEA. 

Anthea, I am going hence 
With some small stock of innocence ; 
But yet those blessed gates I see 
Withstanding entrance unto me. 
To pray for me do thou begin, 
The porter then will let me in. 



870. TO HIS BOOK. 

Take mine advice, and go not near 
Those faces, sour as vinegar ; 
For these, and Nobler numbers can 
Ne'er please the supercilious man. 



872. THE SACRIFICE, BY WAY OF DISCOURSE 
BETWIXT HIMSELF AND JULIA. 

Herr. Come and let 's in solemn wise 
Both address to sacrifice ; 
Old Religion first commands 
That we wash our hearts and hands. 
Is the beast exempt from stain, 
Altar clean, no fire profane ? 
Are the garlands, is the nard 
Ready here ? 



118 HESPERIDES. 

Jul. All well prepar'd, 

With the wine that must be shed, 
'Twixt the horns, upon the head 10 

Of the holy beast we bring 
For our trespass-offering. 

Herr. All is well : now, next to these, 
Put we on pure surplices ; 

And with chaplets crown'd, we'll roast 15 

With perfumes the holocaust ; 
And, while we the gods invoke, 
Read acceptance by the smoke. 



876. AN HYMN TO CUPID. 

Thou, thou that bear'st the sway, 

With whom the sea-nymphs play, 

And Venus, every way ; 

When I embrace thy knee, 

And make short pray'rs to thee, 5 

In love, then prosper me. 

This day I go to woo ; 

Instruct me how to do 

This work thou put'st me to. 

From shame my face keep free, 10 

From scorn I beg of thee, 

Love, to deliver me ! 

So shall I sing thy praise, 

And to thee altars raise, 

Unto the end of days. 15 



HESPERIDES. 119 

883. UPON JULIA'S HAIR BUNDLED UP IN A 
GOLDEN NET. 

Tell me, what needs those rich deceits, 
These golden toils and trammel-nets, 
To take thine hairs, when they are known 
Already tame, and all thine own ? 
'Tis I am wild, and more than hairs 5 

Deserve these mashes and those snares. 
• Set free thy tresses, let them flow 
As airs do breathe or winds do blow ; 
And let such curious networks be 
Less set for them than spread for me. J ° 

890. CHARMS. 

Bring the holy crust of bread, 
Lay it underneath the head ; 
'Tis a certain charm to keep 
Hags away while children sleep. 

891. ANOTHER. 
Let the superstitious wife 

Near the child's heart lay a knife, 

Point be up and haft be down ; 

While she gossips in the town, 

This, 'mongst other mystic charms, 5 

Keeps the sleeping child from harms. 



893. ANOTHER CHARM FOR STABLES. 

Hang up hooks and shears to scare 
Hence the hag that rides the mare, 



120 HESPERIDES. 

Till they be all over wet 
With the mire and the sweat ; 
This observ'd, the manes shall be 
Of your horses all knot-free. 



894. CEREMONIES FOR CANDLEMAS EVE. 

Down with the rosemary and bays, 

Down with the mistletoe ; 
Instead of holly, now upraise 

The greener box, for show. 

The holly hitherto did sway ; 5 

Let box now domineer 
Until the dancing Easter Day 

Or Easter's eve appear. 

Then youthful box, which now hath grace 

Your houses to renew, 10 

Grown old, surrender must his place 
Unto the crisped yew. 

When yew is out, then birch comes in, 

And many flowers beside, 
Both of a fresh and fragrant kin, 1 5 

To honor Whitsuntide. 

Green rushes then, and sweetest bents, 

With cooler oaken boughs, 
Come in for comely ornaments, 

To re-adorn the house. 20 

Thus times do shift, each thing his turn does hold ; 
New things succeed as former things grow old. 



HESPERIDES. 121 



895. THE CEREMONIES FOR CANDLEMAS DAY. 

Kindle the Christmas brand, and then 

Till sunset let it burn ; 
Which quench'd, then lay it up again 

Till Christmas next return. 

Part must be kept, wherewith to teend 
The Christmas log next year ; 

And where 'tis safely kept, the Fiend 
Can do no mischief there. 



896. UPON CANDLEMAS DAY. 

End now the white-loaf and the pie, 
And let all sports with Christmas die. 



908. TO A FRIEND. 

Look in my book, and herein see 
Life endless sign'd to thee and me : 
We o'er the tombs and fates shall fly, 
While other generations die. 



912. UPON BEN JONSON. 

Here lies Jonson with the rest 

Of the poets, but the best. 

Reader, wouldst thou more have known? 

Ask his story, not this stone ; 

That will speak what this can't tell 

Of his glory. So farewell. 



122 HESPERIDES. 

913. AN ODE FOR HIM. 

Ah, Ben ! 
Say how or when 
Shall we, thy guests, 
Meet at those lyric feasts 

Made at the Sun, 5 

The Dog, the Triple Tun, 
Where we such clusters had 
As made us nobly wild, not mad, 
And yet each verse of thine 
Outdid the meat, outdid the frolic wine ? 10 

My Ben ! 
Or come again, 
Or send to us 
Thy wit's great overplus ; 

But teach us yet 15 

Wisely to husband it, 

Lest we that talent spend, 

And having once brought to an end 

That precious stock, the store 

Of such a wit the world should have no more. 20 



923. PRESENT GOVERNMENT GRIEVOUS. 

Men are suspicious, prone to discontent ; 
Subjects still loathe the present government. 



929. THE PRESENT TIME BEST PLEASETH. 

Praise they that will time past, I joy to see 
Myself now live ; this age best pleaseth me. 



HESPERIDES. 123 

956. ON HIMSELF. 

Lost to the world, lost to myself, alone 
Here now I rest under this marble stone, 
In depth of silence, heard and seen of none. 



959. TO JULIA. 

Offer thy gift; but first the law commands 
Thee, Julia, first to sanctify thy hands : 
Do that, my Julia, which the rites require, 
Then boldly give thine incense to the fire. 



962. TO HIS BOOK. 

If hap it must that I must see thee lie 

Absyrtus-like, all torn confusedly, 

With solemn tears and with much grief of heart 

I'll re-collect thee, weeping, part by part, 

And having wash'd thee, close thee in a chest 

With spice ; that done, I'll leave thee to thy rest. 



969. UPON HIS SPANIEL TRACY. 

Now thou art dead, no eye shall ever see, 
For shape and service, spaniel like to thee ; 
This shall my love do, give thy sad death one 
Tear, that deserves of me a million. 



973. STRENGTH TO SUPPORT SOVEREIGNTY. 

Let kings and rulers learn this line from me ; 
Where power is weak, unsafe is majesty. 



124 HESPERIDES. 



976. TO JULIA. 



Holy waters hither bring 

For the sacred sprinkling ; 

Baptise me and thee, and so 

Let us to the altar go ; 

And, ere we our rites commence, 

Wash our hands in innocence ; 

Then I'll be the Rex Sacrorum, 

Thou the Queen of Peace and Quorum. 



982. CEREMONY UPON CANDLEMAS EVE. 

Down with the rosemary, and so 
Down with the bays and mistletoe ; 
Down with the holly, ivy, all 
Wherewith ye dress'd the Christmas hall, 
That so the superstitious find 
No one least branch there left behind ; 
For look, how many leaves there be 
Neglected there, maids, trust to me, 
So many goblins you shall see. 



985. TO HIS KINSMAN, MR. THO: HERRICK, WHO 
DESIRED TO BE IN HIS BOOK. 

Welcome to this my College, and though late 
Th'ast got a place here, standing candidate, 
It matters not, since thou art chosen one 
flere of my great and good foundation. 



HESPERIDES. 125 

986. A BUCOLIC BETWIXT TWO : LACON AND 
THYRSIS. 

Lacon. For a kiss or two, confess 
What doth cause this pensiveness, 
Thou most lovely neatherdess? 
Why so lonely on the hill? 

Why thy pipe by thee so still, 5 

That erewhile was heard so shrill ? 
Tell me, do thy kine now fail 
To fulfil the milking-pail ? 
Say, what is 't that thou dost ail ? 

Thyr. None of these ; but out, alas ! 10 

A mischance is come to pass, 
And I'll tell thee what it was ; 
See, mine eyes, are weeping ripe. 

Lacon. Tell, and I'll lay down my pipe. 

Thyr. I have lost my lovely steer, 1 5 

That to me was far more dear 
Than these kine which I milk here : 
Broad of forehead, large of eye, 
Parti-colored like a pie, 

Smooth in each limb as a die, 20 

Clear of hoof, and clear of horn, 
Sharply pointed as a thorn ; 
With a neck by yoke unworn, 
From the which hung down by strings, 
Balls of cowslips, daisy rings, 25 

Enterplac'd with ribbanings ; 
Faultless every way for shape ; 
Not a straw could him escape ; 
Ever gamesome as an ape, 



126 HESPERIDES. 

But yet harmless as a sheep. 3° 

Pardon, Lacon, if I weep ; 

Tears will spring where woes are deep. 

Now, ai me ! ai me ! Last night 

Came a mad dog, and did bite, 

Aye, and kilPd my dear delight. 35 

Laco?i. Alack, for grief ! 

Thyr. But I'll be brief. 

Hence I must, for time doth call 

Me and my sad playmates all, 

To his ev'ning funeral. 40 

Live long, Lacon ; so adieu ! 

Lacon. Mournful maid, farewell to you ; 
Earth afford ye flowers to strew ! 



1021. ON HIS BOOK. 

The bound, almost, now of my book I see, 
But yet no end of those therein or me ; 
Here we begin new life, while thousands quite 
Are lost, and theirs, in everlasting night. 



1028. SAINT DISTAFF'S DAY; or, THE MORROW 
AFTER TWELFTH DAY. 

Partly work and partly play 
Ye must on St. Distaff's day ; 
From the plough soon free your team, 
Then come home and fodder them : 



HESPERIDES. 127 



If the maids a-spinning go, 
Burn the flax and fire the tow ; 
Bring in pails of water then, 
Let the maids bewash the men ; 
Give St. Distaff all the right, 
Then bid Christmas sport good-night, 
And next morrow every one 
To his own vocation. 



030. 



HIS TEARS TO THAMESIS. 



I send, I send here my supremest kiss, 

To thee, my silver-footed Thamesis ; 

No more shall I reiterate thy Strand, 

Whereon so many stately structures stand, 

Nor in the summer's sweeter evenings go, 5 

To bathe in thee, as thousand others do ; 

No more shall I along thy crystal glide 

In barge with boughs and rushes beautify'd, 

With soft-smooth virgins, for our chaste disport, 

To Richmond, Kingston, and to Hampton Court ; 10 

Never again shall I with finny oar 

Put from or draw unto the faithful shore ; 

And landing here, or safely landing there, 

Make way to my beloved Westminster, 

Or to the golden Cheapside, where the earth 15 

Of Julia Herrick gave to me my birth. 

May all clean nymphs and curious water dames 

With swan-like state float up and down thy streams ; 

No drought upon thy wanton waters fall, 

To make them lean and languishing at all ; 20 

No ruffling winds come hither to disease 

Thy pure and silver-wristed Naiades. 



128 HESPERIDES. 



Keep up your state, ye streams, and as ye spring, 
Never make sick your banks by surfeiting ; 
Grow young with tides, and though I see ye never, 25 
Receive this vow ; so fare-ye-well for ever. 



1032. PEACE NOT PERMANENT. 

Great cities seldom rest ; if there be none 

T' invade from far, they'll find worse foes at home. 

1035. STUDIES TO BE SUPPORTED. 

Studies themselves will languish and decay 
When either price or praise is ta'en away. 

[037. TWELFTH NIGHT; or, KING AND QUEEN. 

Now, now the mirth comes 

With the cake full of plums, 
Where Bean's the King of the sport here ; 

Beside, we must know 

The Pea also 5 

Must revel as Queen in the court here. 

Begin then to choose, 

This night, as ye use, 
Who shall for the present delight here ; 

Be a King by the lot, 10 

And who shall not 
Be Twelve-day Queen for the night here. 

Which known, let us make 
Joy-sops with the cake, 
And let not a man then be seen here 15 



HESPERIDES. 129 

Who unurg'd will not drink, 
To the base from the brink, 
A health to the King and the Queen here. 

Next crown the bowl full 

With gentle lamb's-wool, 20 

Add sugar, nutmeg, and ginger, 

With store of ale too ; 

And thus ye must do 
To make the wassail a swinger. 

Give then to the King 25 

And Queen wassailing, 
And though with ale ye be whet here, 

Yet part ye from hence 

As free from offence 
As when ye innocent met here. 3° 



1039. CAUTION IN COUNCIL. 

Know when to speak ; for many times it brings 
Danger to give the best advice to kings. 

1069. GENTLENESS. 

That prince must govern with a gentle hand, 
Who will have love comply with his command. 

1071. TO JULIA. 

Help me, Julia, for to pray, 
Matins sing, or matins say ; 
This I know, the Fiend will fly 
Far away, if thou be'st by ; 



130 HESPERIDES. 

Bring the holy water hither ; 
Let us wash, and pray together ; 
When our beads are thus united, 
Then the foe will fly affrighted. 

1076. ANOTHER ON THE SAME. 
[1075 * s on Obedience.] 
No man so well a kingdom rules as he 
Who hath himself obey'd the sovereignty. 

1 104. WAR. 

If kings and kingdoms once distracted be, 
The sword of war must try the sovereignty. 

1105. A KING AND NO KING. 

That prince who may do nothing but what's just, 
Rules but by leave, and takes his crown on trust. 

1125. THE MOUNT OF THE MUSES. 

After thy labor take thine ease 
Here with the sweet Pierides. 
But if so be that men will not 
Give thee the laurel crown for lot, 
Be yet assur'd thou shalt have one 
Not subject to corruption. 

1 126. ON HIMSELF. 

I'll write no more of love, but now repent 
Of all those times that I in it have spent ; 
I'll write no more of life, but wish 'twas ended, 
And that my dust was to the earth commended. 



HESPERIDES. 131 



1127. TO HIS BOOK. 



Go thou forth, my book, though late ; 

Yet be timely fortunate. 

It may chance good luck may send 

Thee a kinsman or a friend, 

That may harbor thee, when I 

With my fates neglected lie : 

If thou know'st not where to dwell, 

See, the fler's by. Farewell. 



1 1 28. THE END OF HIS WORK. 

Part of the work remains, one part is past ; 
And here my ship rides, having anchor cast. 



1 1 29. TO CROWN IT. 

My wearied bark, O let it now be crown'd ! 
The haven reach'd to which I first was bound. 



1 130. 



ON HIMSELF. 



The work is done ; young men and maidens set 

Upon my curls the myrtle coronet, 

Wash'd with sweet ointments ; thus at last I come 

To suffer in the Muses' martyrdom, 

But with this comfort, if my blood be shed, 

The Muses will wear blacks when I am dead. 



132 HESPERIDES. 

1131. THE PILLAR OF FAME. 

Fame's pillar here at last we set, 

Out-during marble, brass, or jet; 

Charm'd and enchanted so 

As to withstand the blow 

Of overthrow; 

Nor shall the seas, 

Or OUTRAGES 

Of storms o'erbear 

What we uprear ; 

Tho' kingdoms fall, 

This pillar never shall 

Decline or waste at all, 

But stand for ever by his own 

Firm and well-fix'd foundation. 



To his book's end this last line he'd have plac'd : 
Jocund his Muse was, but his life was chaste. 



HIS FAREWELL UNTO POETRY. 133 

MR. ROBERT HERRICK : HIS FAREWELL UNTO 
POETRY. 1 

I have beheld two lovers in a night 

Hatch'd o'er with moonshine from their stol'n delight 

(When this to that, and that to this, had given 

A kiss to such a jewel of the heaven, 

Or while that each from other's breath did drink 5 

Healths to the rose, the violet, or pink), 

Call'd on the sudden by the jealous mother, 

Some stricter mistress or suspicious other, 

Urging divorcement (worse than death to these) 

By the soon jingling of some sleepy keys, 10 

Part with a hasty kiss ; and in that show 

How stay they would, yet forc'd they are to go. 

Even such are we, and in our parting do 

No otherwise than as those former two 

Natures like ours; we who have spent our time 15 

Both from the morning to the evening chime, 

Nay, till the bellman of the night had toll'd 

Past noon of night, yet were the hours not old 

Nor dull'd with iron sleep, but have outworn 

The fresh and fairest flourish of the morn 20 

With flame and rapture ; drinking to the odd 

Number of nine which makes us full with God, 

And in that mystic frenzy we have hurl'd, 

As with a tempest, nature through the world, 

And in a whirlwind twirl'd her home, aghast 25 

At that which in her ecstasy had past ; 

Thus crown'd with rose-buds, sack, thou mad'st me fly 

Like fire-drakes, yet did'st me no harm thereby. 

1 This poem is not in the Hesperides, but is reprinted by Hazlitt, 
Grosart, and Pollard from the Ashmole MS. 38, p. 108, Art. 121. 
Hazlitt's text is somewhat confused : Grosart's is almost literatim. I 
follow, except in a few words, Pollard, who has corrected the spelling. 



134 HIS FAREWEII UNTO POETRY. 

thou almighty nature, who did'st give 

True heat wherewith humanity doth live 30 

Beyond its stinted circle, giving food, 

White fame and resurrection to the good ; 

Soaring them up 'bove ruin till the doom, 

The general April of the world doth come 

That makes all equal, — many thousands should, 35 

Were 't not for thee, have crumbled into mould, 

And with their serecloths rotted, not to show 

Whether the world such spirits had or no, 

Whereas by thee, those and a million since, 

Nor fate, nor envy, can their fames convince. 40 

Homer, Musaeus, Ovid, Maro, more 

Of those godful prophets long before 

Held their eternal fires, and ours of late 

Thy mercy helping, shall resist strong fate, 

Nor stoop to th' centre, but survive as long 45 

As fame or rumor hath or trump or tongue ; 

But unto me be only hoarse, since now 

(Heaven and my soul bear record of my vow) 

1 my desires screw from thee, and direct 

Them and my thoughts to that sublim'd respect 50 

And conscience unto priesthood. 'Tis not need 

(The scarecrow unto mankind) that doth breed 

Wiser conclusions in me, since I know 

I've more to bear my charge than way to go, 

Or had I not, I'd stop the spreading itch 55 

Of craving more, so in conceit be rich ; 

But 'tis the God of nature who intends 

And shapes my function for more glorious ends. 

Kiss, so depart, yet stay a while to see 

The lines of sorrow that lie drawn in me 60 

In speech, in picture ; no otherwise than when, 

Judgment and death denounc'd 'gainst guilty men, 



HIS FAREWELL UNTO POETRY. 135 

Each takes a weeping farewell, rack'd in mind 

With joys before and pleasures left behind, 

Shaking the head, while each to each doth mourn, 65 

With thought they go whence they must ne'er return. 

So with like looks, as once the ministrel 

Cast, leading his Eurydice through hell, 

I strike thy love, and greedily pursue 

Thee with mine eyes or in or out of view. 7° 

So look'd the Grecian orator when sent 

From's native country into banishment, 

Throwing his eyeballs backward to survey 

The smoke of his beloved Attica ; 

So Tully look'd when from the breasts of Rome 75 

The sad soul went, not with his love, but doom, 

Shooting his eyedarts 'gainst it to surprise 

It, or to draw the city to his eyes. 

Such is my parting with thee, and to prove 

There was not varnish only in my love, 80 

But substance, lo ! receive this pearly tear 

Frozen with grief and place it in thine ear, 

Then part in name of peace, and softly on 

With numerous feet to hoofy Helicon ; 

And when thou art upon that forked hill 85 

Amongst the thrice three sacred virgins, fill 

A full brimm'd bowl of fury and of rage, 

And quaff it to the prophets of our age ; 

When drunk with rapture curse the blind and lame 

Base ballad mongers who usurp thy name 90 

And foul thy altar ; charm some into frogs, 

Some to be rats, and others to be hogs ; 

Into the loathsom'st shapes thou canst devise 

To make fools hate them, only by disguise. 

Thus with a kiss of warmth and love I part, 95 

Not so but that some relic in my heart 



136 HIS FAREWELI UNTO POETRY. 

Shall stand for ever, though I do address 
Chiefly myself to what I must profess. 
Know yet, rare soul, when my diviner muse 
Shall want a handmaid (as she oft will use), 
Be ready, thou for me, to wait upon her, 
Though as a servant, yet a maid of honor. 
The crown of duty is our duty : well- 
Doing's the fruit of doing well. Farewell. 



HIS NOBLE NUMBERS 



HIS PIOUS PIECES, 



Wherein (amongst other things) he sings the Birth of his Christ: 
and sighs for his Saviour's suffering on the cross. 



HIS NOBLE NUMBERS. 



I. HIS CONFESSION. 

Look how our foul days do exceed our fair ; 

And as our bad more than our good works are, 

Ev'n so those lines, penn'd by my wanton wit, 

Treble the number of these good I've writ. 

Things precious are least num'rous ; men are prone 5 

To do ten bad for one good action. 

2. HIS PRAYER FOR ABSOLUTION. 

For those my unbaptized rhymes, 

Writ in my wild unhallowed times, 

For every sentence, clause, and word, 

That's not inlaid with Thee, my Lord, 

Forgive me, God, and blot each line 5 

Out of my book that is not Thine. 

But if, 'mongst all, Thou find'st here one 

Worthy Thy benediction, 

That one of all the rest shall be 

The glory of my work and me. 10 

7. GOD'S ANGER WITHOUT AFFECTION. 

God, when He's angry here with any one, 
His wrath is free from perturbation ; 
And when we think His looks are sour and grim, 
The alteration is in us, not Him". 



140 HIS NOBLE NUMBERS. 

33. AN ODE OF THE BIRTH OF OUR SAVIOUR. 

In numbers, and but these few, 

I sing Thy birth, O Jesu ! 

Thou pretty Baby, born here, 

With sup'rabundant scorn here, 

Who for Thy princely port here, 5 

Hadst for Thy place 

Of birth, a base 
Out-stable for thy court here. 

Instead of neat enclosures 

Of interwoven osiers, 10 

Instead of fragrant posies 

Of daffodils and roses, 

Thy cradle, Kingly Stranger, 

As Gospel tells, 

Was nothing else, 15 

But, here, a homely manger. 

But we with silks, not crewels, 

With sundry precious jewels, 

And lily-work, will dress Thee ; 

And as we dispossess Thee 20 

Of clouts, we'll make a chamber, 

Sweet Babe, for Thee, 

Of ivory, 
And plaister'd round with amber. 

The Jews they did disdain Thee, 25 

But we will entertain Thee 
With glories to await here 
Upon Thy princely state here, 
And more for love than pity ; 

From year to year 30 

We'll make Thee here 
A freeborn of our city. 



HIS NOBLE NUMBERS. 141 



37. SIN SEEN. 



When once the sin has fully acted been, 
Then is the horror of the trespass seen. 



38. UPON TIME. 

Time was upon 
The wing, to fly away; 

And I call'd on 
Him but a while to stay ; 

But he'd be gone, 5 

For aught that I could say. 

He held out then 
A writing, as he went, 

And ask'd me, when 
False man would be content 10 

To pay again 
What God and nature lent. 

An hour-glass, 
In which were sands but few, 

As he did pass, 15 

He show'd, and told me too 

Mine end near was, 
And so away he flew. 



41. HIS LETANY, TO THE HOLY SPIRIT. 

In the hour of my distress, 
When temptations me oppress, 
And when I my sins confess, 

Sweet Spirit, comfort me ! 



142 HIS NOBLE NUMBERS. 

When I lie within my bed, 5 

Sick in heart and sick in head, 
And with doubts discomforted, 

Sweet Spirit, comfort me ! 

When the house doth sigh and weep, 

And the world is drown'd in sleep, 10 

Yet mine eyes the watch do keep, 

Sweet Spirit, comfort me ! 

When the artless doctor sees 
No one hope, but of his fees, 

And his skill runs on the lees, 15 

Sweet Spirit, comfort me ! 

When his potion and his pill, 
Has or none or little skill, 
Meet for nothing but to kill, 

Sweet Spirit, comfort me ! 20 

When the passing-bell doth toll, 
And the furies in a shoal 
Come to fright a parting soul, 

Sweet Spirit, comfort me ! 

When the tapers now burn blue, 25 

And the comforters are few, 
And that number more than true, 

Sweet Spirit, comfort me ! 

When the priest his last hath pray'd, 

And I nod to what is said 30 

'Cause my speech is now decay'd, 

Sweet Spirit, comfort me ! 



HIS NOBLE NUMBERS. 143 

When, God knows, I'm toss'd about, 
Either with despair or doubt, 

Yet, before the glass be out, 35 

Sweet Spirit, comfort me ! 

When the tempter me pursu'th 
With the sins of all my youth, 
And half damns me with untruth, 

Sweet Spirit, comfort me ! 40 

When the flames and hellish cries 
Fright mine ears and fright mine eyes, 
And all terrors me surprise, 

Sweet Spirit, comfort me ! 

When the Judgment is reveal'd, 45 

And that open'd which was seal'd, 
When to thee I have appeal'd, 

Sweet Spirit, comfort me ! 



47. A THANKSGIVING TO GOD FOR HIS HOUSE. 

Lord, Thou hast given me a cell 

Wherein to dwell, 
A little house, whose humble roof 

Is weather-proof, 
Under the spars of which I lie 

Both soft and dry ; 
Where Thou, my chamber for to ward, 

Hast set a guard 
Of harmless thoughts, to watch and keep 

Me while I sleep. 
Low is my porch, as is my fate, 

Both void of state ; 



144 HIS N0BL3 NUMBERS. 

And yet the threshold of my door 

Is worn by th' poor, 
Who thither come and freely get 15 

Good words or meat. 
Like as my parlor so my hall 

And kitchen's small ; 
A little buttery, and therein 

A little bin, 20 

Which keeps my little loaf of bread 

Unchipp'd, unflead; 
Some brittle sticks of thorn or briar 

Make me a fire, 
Close by whose living coal I sit, 25 

And glow like it. 
Lord, I confess too, when I dine, 

The pulse is Thine, 
And all those other bits that be 

There plac'd by Thee ; 30 

The worts, the purslane, and the mess 

Of water-cress, 
Which of Thy kindness Thou hast sent ; 

And my content 
Makes those, and my beloved beet, 35 

To be more sweet. 
'Tis Thou that crown'st my glittering hearth 

With guiltless mirth, 
And giv'st me wassail bowls to drink, 

Spic'd to the brink. 40 

Lord, 'tis Thy plenty-dropping hand 

That soils my land, 
And giv'st me, for my bushel sown, 

Twice ten for one ; 
Thou mak'st my teeming hen to lay 45 

Her egg each day ; 



HIS NOBLE NUMBERS. 145 

Besides my healthful ewes to bear 

Me twins each year ; 
The while the conduits of my kine 

Run cream, for wine. 50 

All these, and better Thou dost send 

Me, to this end, 
That I should render, for my part, 

A thankful heart, 
Which, fir'd with incense, I resign, 55 

As wholly Thine ; 
But the acceptance, that must be, 

My Christ, by Thee. 



S3- 



TO DEATH. 



Thou bidd'st me come away, 

And I'll no longer stay 

Than for to shed some tears 

For faults of former years, 

And to repent some crimes 5 

Done in the present times ; 

And next, to take a bit 

Of bread, and wine with it ; 

To d'on my robes of love, 

Fit for the place above ; 10 

To gird my loins about 

With charity throughout, 

And so to travail hence 

With feet of innocence : 

These done, I'll only cry, 15 

God, mercy! and so die. 



146 HIS NOBLE NUMBERS. 

59. TO HIS SAVIOUR, A CHILD; A PRESENT, BY A 
CHILD. 

Go, pretty child, and bear this flower 

Unto thy little Saviour ; 

And tell Him, by that bud now blown, 

He is the Rose of Sharon known. 

When thou hast said so, stick it there 5 

Upon His bib or stomacher ; 

And tell Him, for good handsel too, 

That thou hast brought a whistle new, 

Made of a clean strait oaten reed, 

To charm His cries at time of need. 10 

Tell Him, for coral thou hast none, 

But if thou hadst, He should have one ; 

But poor thou art, and known to be 

Even as moneyless as He. 

Lastly, if thou canst, win a kiss 15 

From those mellifluous lips of His ; 

Then never take a second on, 

To spoil the first impression. 



77. TO HIS SWEET SAVIOUR. 

Night hath no wings to him that cannot sleep, 
And Time seems then not for to fly, but creep ; 
Slowly her chariot drives, as if that she 
Had broke her wheel or crack'd her axletree. 
Just so it is with me, who list'ning, pray 
The winds to blow the tedious night away, 
That I might see the cheerful peeping day. 
Sick is my heart. O Saviour ! do thou please 
To make my bed soft in my sicknesses ; 
Lighten my candle, so that I beneath, 



HIS NOBLE NUMBERS. 147 

Sleep not for ever in the vaults of death ; 

Let me Thy voice betimes i' th' morning hear ; 

Call, and I'll come ; say Thou the when and where : 

Draw me but first, and after Thee I'll run, 

And make no one stop till my race be done. 15 

83. THE DIRGE OF JEPHTHAH'S DAUGHTER: SUNG 
BY THE VIRGINS. 

O thou, the wonder of all days ! 
O paragon, and pearl of praise ! 
O Virgin-martyr, ever blest 
Above the rest 
Of all the maiden-train ! We come, 5 

And bring fresh strewings to thy tomb. 

Thus, thus, and thus we compass round 
Thy harmless and unhaunted ground, 
And as we sing thy dirge, we will 

The daffodil 10 

And other flowers lay upon 
The altar of our love, thy stone. 

Thou wonder of all maids, li'st here, 

Of daughters all the dearest dear, 

The eye of virgins ; nay, the queen 15 

Of this smooth green, 
And all sweet meads from whence we get 
The primrose and the violet. 

Too soon, too dear did Jephthah buy, 
By thy sad loss, our liberty ; 20 

His was the bond and cov'nant, yet 
Thou paid'st the debt ; 
Lamented maid ! He won the day, 
But for the conquest thou didst pay. 



148 HIS NOBIE NUMBERS. 

Thy father brought with him along 25 

The olive branch and victor's song; 
He slew the Ammonites, we know, 

But to thy woe ; 
And in the purchase of our peace, 
The cure was worse than the disease. 30 

For which obedient zeal of thine 

We offer here, before thy shrine, , 

Our sighs for storax, tears for wine ; 

And to make fine 
And fresh thy hearse-cloth, we will here 35 

Four times bestrew thee ev'ry year. 

Receive, for this thy praise, our tears ; 
Receive this offering of our hairs ; 
Receive these crystal vials, fill'd 

With tears distilFd 40 

From teeming eyes ; to these we bring, 
Each maid, her silver filleting 

To gild thy tomb, besides, these cauls, 
These laces, ribbands, and these falls, 
These veils wherewith we use to hide 45 

The bashful bride, 
When we conduct her to her groom : 
All, all we lay upon thy tomb. 

No more, no more, since thou art dead, 

Shall we e'er bring coy brides to bed ; 5° 

No more, at yearly festivals, 

We cowslip balls 
Or chains of columbines shall make 
For this or that occasion's sake. 



HIS NOBLE NUMBERS. 149 

No, no ; our maiden pleasures be 55 

Wrapt in the winding-sheet with thee ; 
'Tis we are dead, though not i' th' grave, 

Or if we have 
One seed of life left, 'tis to keep 
A Lent for thee, to fast and weep. 60 

Sleep in thy peace, thy bed of spice, 

And make this place all paradise ; 

May sweets grow here, and smoke from hence 

Fat frankincense ; 
Let balm and cassia send their scent 65 

From out thy maiden monument. 

May no wolf howl, or screech owl stir 

A wing about thy sepulchre ; 

No boisterous winds or storms come hither, 

To starve or wither 70 

Thy soft sweet earth, but, like a spring, 
Love keep it ever flourishing. 

May all shy maids at wonted hours 

Come forth to strew thy tomb with flow'rs ; 

May virgins, when they come to mourn, 75 

Male incense burn 
Upon thine altar, then return 
And leave thee sleeping in thy urn. 

95. ANOTHER GRACE FOR A CHILD. 

Here a little child I stand, 

Heaving up my either hand ; 

Cold as paddocks though they be, 

Here I lift them up to Thee, 

For a benison to fall 5 

On our meat and on us all. Amen. 



150 HIS NOBLE NUMBERS. 

96. A CHRISTMAS CAROL, SUNG XO THE KING IN 
THE PRESENCE AT WHITEHALL. 

Chor. What sweeter music can we bring 
Than a carol, for to sing 
The birth of this our heavenly King? 
Awake the voice ! awake the string ! 
Heart, ear, and eye, and every thing, 5 

Awake ! the while the active finger 
Runs division with the singer. 

From the Flourish they came to the Song. 

1 . Dark and dull night, fly hence away, 
And give the honor to this day 

That sees December turn'd to May. 10 

2. If we may ask the reason, say 

The why and wherefore all things here 
Seem like the spring-time of the year? 

3. Why does the chilling winter's morn 

Smile like a field beset with corn ; 15 

Or smell like to a mead new-shorn, 

Thus on the sudden? 4. Come and see 

The cause why things thus fragrant be. 

'Tis He is born, whose quick'ning birth 

Gives life and lustre, public mirth, 20 

To heaven and the under earth. 

Chor. We see Him come, and know Him ours, 
Who, with His sunshine and His showers, 
Turns all the patient ground to flowers. 



The Darling of the world is come, 25 

And fit it is we find a room 

To welcome Him. 2. The nobler part 

Of all the house here is the heart, 



HIS NOBLE NUMBERS. 151 

Chor. Which we will give Him, and bequeath 

This holly and this ivy wreath, 30 

To do Him honor, who 's our King, 
And Lord of all this revelling. 

The musical part was composed by 
M. Henry Lawes. 



102. THE STAR SONG; A CAROL TO THE KING. 
SUNG AT WHITEHALL. 

The flourish of music: theft followed the song. 

1. Tell us, thou clear and heavenly tongue, 
Where is the Babe but lately sprung? 
Lies He the lily-banks among? 

2. Or say, if this new Birth of ours 

Sleeps, laid within some ark of flowers, 5 

Spangled with dew-light ; thou canst clear 
All doubts, and manifest the where. 

3. Declare to us, bright star, if we shall seek 
Him in the morning's blushing cheek, 

Or search the bed of spices through 10 

To find him out? 

Star. No, this ye need not do ; 

But only come and see Him rest, 
A princely Babe, in's mother's breast. 

Chor. He's seen ! He's seen ! Why then around 

Let's kiss the sweet and holy ground, 15 

And all rejoice that we have found 
A King before conception crown'd. 

4. Come then, come then, and let us bring 
Unto our pretty Twelfth-tide King 

Each one his several offering ; 20 



152 HIS NOBIE NUMBERS. 

Chor. And when night comes we'll give Him wassailing ; 
And that His treble honors may be seen, 
We'll choose Him King, and make His mother Queen. 

115. HIS WISH TO GOD. 

I would to God that mine old age might have, 

Before my last, but here a living grave," 

Some one poor alms-house, there to lie or stir, 

Ghost-like, as in my meaner sepulchre. 

A little piggin and a pipkin by, 5 

To hold things fitting my necessity, 

Which rightly us'd, both in their time and place, 

Might me excite to fore and after-grace. 

Thy cross, my Christ, fix'd 'fore mine eyes should be 

Not to adore that, but to worship Thee. 10 

So here the remnant of my days I'd spend, 

Reading Thy Bible and my book ; so end. 

121. THE BELLMAN. 

Along the dark and silent night, 

With my lantern and my light, 

And the tinkling of my bell, 

Thus I walk, and this I tell : 

Death and dreadfulness call on 5 

To the gen'ral Session, 

To whose dismal bar we there 

All accounts must come to clear. 

Scores of sins w'ave made here many, 

Wip'd out few, God knows, if any. 10 

Rise, ye debtors, then, and fall 

To make payment while I call. 

Ponder this, when I am gone ; 

By the clock 'tis almost one. 



HIS NOBLE NUMBERS. 153 

215. PREDESTINATION. 

Predestination is the cause alone 
Of many standing, but of fall to none. 

221. CHRIST. 

To all our wounds here, whatsoe'er they be, 
Christ is the one sufficient remedy. 

228. TO KEEP A TRUE LENT. 

Is this a fast, to keep 

The larder lean, 
And clean 
From fat of veals and sheep ? 

Is it to quit the dish 5 

Of flesh, yet still 
To fill 
The platter high with fish? 

Is it to fast an hour, 

Or ragg'd to go, 10 

Or show 
A downcast look, and sour ? 

No ; 'tis a fast, to dole 

Thy sheaf of wheat 

And meat 15 

Unto the hungry soul. 

It is to fast from strife, 

From old debate, 
And hate ; 
To circumcise thy life. 20 



154 HIS NOBLE NUMBERS. 

To show a heart grief-rent ; 
To starve thy sin, 
Not bin ; 
And that's to keep thy Lent. 



230. HIS MEDITATION UPON DEATH. 

Be those few hours which I have yet to spend, 

Bless'd with the meditation of my end ; 

Though they be few in number, I'm content; 

If otherwise, I stand indifferent; 

Nor makes it matter Nestor's years to tell, 5 

If man lives long, an if he live not well. 

A multitude of days still heaped on 

Seldom brings order, but confusion. 

Might I make choice, long life should be withstood, 

Nor would I care how short it were, if good ; 10 

Which, to effect, let ev'ry passing bell 

Possess my thoughts, next comes my doleful knell ; 

And when the night persuades me to my bed, 

I'll think I'm going to be buried ; 

So shall the blankets which come over me, 15 

Present those turfs which once must cover me, 

And with as firm behavior I will meet 

The sheet I sleep in as my winding-sheet. 

When sleep shall bathe his body in mine eyes, 

I will believe that then my body dies ; 20 

And if I chance to wake, and rise thereon, 

I'll have in mind my resurrection, 

Which must produce me to that gen'ral doom 

To which the peasant, so the prince must come, 

To hear the Judge give sentence on the throne, 25 

Without the least hope of affection. 



HIS NOBLE NUMBERS. 155 

Tears at that day shall make but weak defence, 

When hell and horror fright the conscience. 

Let me, though late, yet at the last, begin 

To shun the least temptation to a sin ; 30 

Though to be tempted be no sin, until 

Man to th' alluring object gives his will. 

Such let my life assure me, when my breath 

Goes thieving from me, I am safe in death, 

Which is the height of comfort ; when I fall 35 

I rise triumphant in my funeral. 



Of all the good things whatsoe'er we do, 
God is the APXH and the TEA02 too. 



NOTES. 



NOTES. 



To the Most Illustrious, etc. Dedicatory verses to illustrious 
persons were fashionable in Herrick's day, and in this opening 
poem Herrick follows the fashion. We need not doubt that Herrick 
was devotedly and heartily loyal, — the general tone of his poetry is 
enough to assure that he was, — but we cannot detect much more 
than perfunctory feeling in this poem. Herrick had celebrated the 
birth of Charles in a Pastoral (213), and had written some other 
poems to him. As to how far Charles could properly be called " the 
creator " of the poet's work (cf. the dedication of Shakespeare's 
Sonnets: "the only begetter"), one may form some opinion by com- 
paring those poems that have any reference to Charles, or any other 
of the royal family, and those that have not. 

1. The Argument of his Book. " One inhales with sense of relief 
from mephitic air," says Dr. Grosart (I. cxii), " the freshness of the 
outburst that succeeds the verse-dedication." This very pleasant 
little poem would seem to have been written by Herrick at some 
time when he was thinking over his poems, perhaps with a view to 
publication. Dr. Grosart considers it to have been especially in- 
tended as a sort of Table of Contents to an intended edition (I, cxiv 
and cxxi). Although it is not necessary to go as far as this (Diss. 
pp. 10-12), it is of interest to see how many of the poems of the 
Hesperides are here referred to either directly or by implication. 
The second line refers, perhaps, to The Succession of the Four Sweet 
Months (70) ; the third to The Maypole (697), the Hock-Cart (250), 
The Wassail (478), The Wake (763). The fourth would refer to a 
whole class of poems, the Epithalamia, of which that on the marriage 
of Sir Clipseby Crew (283) is a good specimen. See also The Bride- 
cake (807). The tenth refers to How Roses came Red (258, 708) and 
How Lilies came White (190), and, it may be, to a number of other 
poems on subjects very like. With line n cf. To Groves (451) and 
Twilight (860, 1048). Line 12 refers to 223, 293, 444. The last 
two lines may refer to the Noble Numbers: it is possible, indeed, 
that they were added when the poem was put in its present place. 



160 NOTES. 

1 3. I sing of Maypoles, etc. Some account of the country 
customs here alluded to will be found in the notes on the poems 
just mentioned. 

1 8. Of Balm, etc. Herrick's fondness for perfumes is one of 
his noteworthy characteristics. Cf. Introd., p. xxxiii. 

2. To his Muse. The antithesis of village and court, and the 
mention of the poor man's cell strike a note not uncommon. E.g. 
106 (80-90), 213, 494, 546, 554, N.N. 47. 

2 9. And with thy Eclogues. The precise distinction here drawn 
between Eclogue and Bucolic is not wholly clear to me. Professor 
Kittredge suggests that Herrick may take " Eclogue as a discourse 
of shepherds and Bucolic as a discourse of neatherds." There is a 
hint of such distinction in 11. 7-13 ; and 494, An Eclogue (where the 
subject is of shepherds), and 718, A Bucolic: or Discourse of Neat- 
herds, would point in the same direction. 

3. To his Book. There are a good many of these little poems 
addressed by Herrick to his book (Introd., pp. xxviii), 59, 84, 194, 
605, 846, 901, 962, 1 1 27. 

3 3. Wantonly to roam may refer to the custom which was 
then in vogue of passing about copies of verse in MS. A number 
of Herrick's poems exist in MS.; collations of the important ones 
will be found in the notes of Mr. Pollard's edition. 

8. When he would have his verses read. In the light of this 
cheerful command it seems quite wrong to put any study at all on 
Herrick's poetry. His poems were to be read only at a favorable 
time: nor could he write them except at a favorable time (716). 
Pollard compares the poem with Martial, x. 19, which is somewhat 
longer. The last part of our poem is a good translation ; the rest 
merely catches the idea. 

14. To Perilla. There are two other poems addressed to Perilla 
(154, 1022), neither of them as fine as this one, which has a grave 
beauty equal almost to any other one of Herrick's. The last line is 
especially remarkable. The ceremonies prescribed are doubtless 
ideal {Introd., p. xxxvii). The use of salt as emblem of the soul is 
noted by Mr. Pollard and by Brand, II. 234. The strewings are 
of flowers, as frequently in the Hesperides. Brand (II. 302-312) 
mentions many variations of the custom. 

22. To Anthea. These ceremonies, too, come from a mind for 
which such observances had a strong fascination. Wholly different 
from those of 14, they are quite as noteworthy as indicating the 
delicate fancy which always twines in with the thread of Herrick's 



NOTES. 161 

seriousness. Excepting the poems to Julia, which are far more 
numerous, those to Anthea are more interesting on the whole than 
the verses to any other one of Herrick's " many dainty mistresses." 

25. The Difference, etc. This poem is worth noting for its possible 
bearing on Herrick's opinions. We must, however, remember the 
remark of Mr. Pollard that in these Gnomic Couplets Herrick is 
almost as likely to express ideas which he had come across in read- 
ing or otherwise that seemed susceptible of epigrammatic statement, 
as to put forth any settled opinions of his own. 

29. Love, what it is. Cf. 841. 

35. His sailing from Julia. The remora was the sea-lamprey, 
which, according to ancient belief, attached itself to ships and so 
delayed their course. 

39. Upon the Loss of his Mistresses. Julia is, of course, the chief, 
the best known of those to whom Herrick wrote. Judging from the 
poems we have, we should have expected to find Anthea second and 
Perilla next. But one cannot insist on rigid rule and order in such 
matters. 

47. The Parcce. This has the tone of having been written to 
three actual lovely sisters. 

51. Discontents in Devon. Mr. Pollard's note is as follows : 
" This poem is often quoted to prove that Herrick's country in- 
cumbency was good for his verse, but if the reference be only to his 
sacred poems or Noble Numbers they would only prove the reverse." 
It would be an error, however, to attempt to prove much of any- 
thing from such a poem. It may well have been written on a rainy 
day when parishioners were bothersome ; and as to the last lines, the 
effect of Herrick's stay in Devonshire is so marked that it needs no 
special proof. 

55. To Anthea. In some parishes of England it was in Herrick's 
day still the custom for some of the clergy, and the people too, to 
march in procession at certain times of the year around the parish 
boundaries. The object was not only to pray for a blessing on the 
fruits of the earth, but also to maintain the legal boundaries and 
rights. This "processioning," as it was sometimes called, took 
place on one of the days before Holy Thursday. The "Gospel 
tree" here spoken of would have been one of the trees under which 
the ministe'r paused to read the service during the march around the 
bounds. See Brand I. 197-207. 

70. The Succession of the Four Sweet Months. Cf. The Argu- 
ment, 1, 2. 



162 NOTES. 

77. To the King. In the summer of 1644, after the affair at 
Cropredy Bridge, Charles found himself disembarrassed of Sir William 
Waller and turned his attention to the West. He marched into 
Devonshire with a view of joining Prince Maurice and giving battle 
to the Earl of Essex. The hopes of our poem were to some extent 
fulfilled, for the King succeeded in surrounding the army of Essex 
at Lostwithiel in Cornwall and captured the greater part of it. The 
campaign came between Marston Moor and the second battle of 
Newbury. Clarendon's book viii gives a detailed, interesting, and 
rather confused account. 

77 2. Universal genius. General protecting power. 

77 10. Access. Coming. 

77 11. White omens. Fortunate auspices. 

81. The Cheat of Cupid. Herrick is here translating Anacreon, 
31 [3], as Greene had done before him. 

82. To the Revei-end Shade, etc. The full meaning of this poem 
can hardly be made out: line 6 is as hard to understand as any. 
There was suspicion of suicide attaching to the death of Herrick's 
father, and it may be that he was not buried in consecrated ground. 
Herrick was very young at the time, and it is possible that he had 
never till 1627 (seven lustra after 1592) really known where his 
father had been buried. On the other hand, it is not improbable 
that the language is wholly imaginative. The time of writing was 
about that of his going to Devonshire. These years may have 
been years of change of heart for the poet (cf. The Farewell to 
Poetry, p. 133), and it may be that he then reproached himself for 
carelessness of his father's memory. 

S6. Dean Bourn. It was the tradition {Quarterly Review for 
August, 1810, p. 171) that Herrick uttered these verses when he left 
Devonshire on being deprived in 1648. The hope of the first lines 
was not fulfilled, for he did return thither after the Restoration, and 
lived there until he died. Dean was the name of the parish ; Dean 
Bourn was the river ; Dean Prior, Dean Combe, Dean Church were 
the villages, and Dean Court the manor-house. 

88. To Julia. A Dardanium, explains Herrick in the original 
edition, was " a bracelet, from Dardanus so called." 

97. Duty to Tyrants. This agrees with some of Herrick's utter- 
ances elsewhere, and disagrees with others. 

106. A Country Life. This poem may be compared with The 
Country Life (664), addressed to Endymion Porter. It is perhaps 
but a fancy, but it seems to me that this latter has by far the more 



NOTES. 163 

genuine ring to it. This present poem so full of Horatian wisdom, 
of Horatian ceremony, and of Horatian reminiscence, lacks the real- 
istic touches of the other. It is more spun out and less vital. It is 
written in the free versification which I believe to be characteristic 
of Herrick's earlier poetry, while the other is quite particular as to 
overrun lines. The references in the present poem to " damask'd 
meadows " (43), to " fields enamelled with flowers " (46), to " millions 
of lilies mix'd with roses" (48), have not the genuine character of 
the " breath of great-ey'd kine " (33) or the " crowns of daffodils and 
daisies " (51), though it must be confessed that 664 is not without 
its slight touch of enamelling (29). But 106 has more the tone of 
being written from the city, perhaps after a visit. 

Mr. Pollard (I. 267) notices the many Horatian snatches, and 
quotes a few. We may add one or two more beside that remarked 
in the Introduction, p. xx. The simple fare of ill recalls 

" me pascunt olivae 
me cichorea levesque malvae," qj j xxx - 



while 1. 130 was suggested by 



" Auream quisquis mediocritatem 
D[li Z [t " etc - Od. II. x. 5. 

111. A Lyric to Mirth. This poem bears the earmarks of 
Herrick's years in London between Cambridge and Devonshire. 
The general Bacchanalian tone and the references to Horace and 
Anacreon appear to be more characteristic of this period than of his 
life in Devonshire. 

Ill 4. Dollies was a cant term for sweethearts. 

Ill 8. Bite the bays. The laurel of the poets is bay-laurel. 

Ill 13. Wilson and Gotiere. "Dr. John Wilson, the singer and 
composer, one of the King's musicians. Jacques Gouter, a French 
musician at the court of Charles I." P. 

128. His Farewell to Sack. This poem, The Welcome to Sack 
(197), His Mistress' Shade (577), and the Farewell to Poetry (p. 133), 
have a sort of common quality which makes it seem as though 
all were written at about the same time, — a time which the last 
mentioned (perhaps also the last written) would fix at about 1627. 
There is certainly about all of them a lack of that fine restraint and 
sureness of expression characteristic of Herrick's best work. 

Of these two poems on Sack, the Farewell would seem to have 
been written first. Like many of the rest of us, Herrick had his 



164 NOTES. 

righteous periods in which he would forswear the flowing bowl. 
But with Herrick it would seem that these periods- sometimes came 
to an end. 

128 4, 5. Life to quick action. Dr. Grosart conjectures, " to quick 
our action," which certainly makes better metre. We may, however, 
read quick as a verb without inserting the pronoun. 

128 23. Thy mystic fan Mr. Pollard explains as a translation 
of the "mystica vannus " (Georgics, i. 166) borne in the Eleusinian 
processions. 

128 36. Worthy cedar and the bays. The bays are of course in 
the poet's crown. Cedar-oil was used in the preservation of manu- 
scripts. In one of the few poems that we have of Herrick's, not 
published in the Hesperides, is a couplet with the same allusion : 

" O volume worthy, leafe by leafe, and cover, 
To be with juice of cedar wash't all over." 

Upon Master Fletcher's Incomparable Plays. 

Reprinted in G. iii, 109, from Beaumont and Fletcher's works, 1647. 
So also in To Cedars (165) : 

" If 'mongst my many poems, I can see 
One only worthy to be washed by thee," etc. 

197. The Welcome to Sack. 11. " The heaven's Osiris is the sun." 
Original note. At one time Egypt seems to have had a certain fas- 
cination for Herrick. There is a curious allusion to the Egyptian 
worship in this poem (57) which I cannot explain. We have also 
the heavenly /sis (52), which Herrick explains as the moon. A Song 
to the Masquers (15) ends with this stanza : 

" As goddess Isis, when she went 
Or glided through the street, 
Made all that touch'd her, with her scent, 
And whom she touch'd, turn sweet." 

So in Love perfumes all parts (155) : 

" Goddess Isis can't transfer 
Musks and ambers more from her." 

197 30. Sulphur, hair, and salt. Salt was used by the Romans in 
almost all their sacrifices. Cf. Saliente mica, Hor. Od. Ill, xxiii, 20. 
The hair was sometimes offered. It was due, for instance, to Pro- 
serpina. Cf. Virgil, Aen. iv, 698. But I know of no example of such 
a use of sulphur. 



NOTES. 165 

197 61. Cassius. There is a writer on medicine of this name, 
called sometimes Iatrosophista, sometimes Felix, to whom Dr. Gro- 
sart refers. It is more probable that Herrick was thinking of that 
Cassius who, according to Caesar, had "a lean and hungry look." 
Julius Ccesar, i. 2, 94. 

197 62. The wise Cato was the synonym for a rigid virtue. Her- 
rick often had him in mind (8 10). 

178. Corinna's going a-Maying. This fine poem seems to have 
been the product of Herrick's earlier years, of his life in London or 
Cambridge. It is written as though by a participant, and one can- 
not well imagine Herrick the vicar actually carrying into effect these 
delightful precepts, whereas, it is just what we might expect of the 
student of St. John's or the poet of the Tribe of Ben. The versifi- 
cation would incline one to place it among the earlier poems. May- 
day was of course celebrated in the city as well as in the country. 
"In London," says Brand (I. 231), "May-day was once as much 
observed as it was in any rural district." 

178 2. The god tinshorn was Apollo, the sun-god, who was regu- 
larly represented with unshorn locks. Cf. Tibullus, ii. 5, 121 : "Sic 
tibi sint intonsi, Phoebs, capilli." 

178 4. Fresh-quilted. The figure may have been borrowed from 
the variety of colors in stuffs quilted together. 

178 28. Few beads. The original meaning of " bead " is "prayer," 
and so it is here. But by Herrick's day the word in the sense of 
"prayer" was almost always used with some thought of the rosary, 
whence the modern meaning of the word. 

178 29 foil. On the morning of May-day everybody went out early 
and returned with "birch, bowes, branches of trees " (Stubbes: Anat- 
omy of Abuses), with which they adorned the houses inside and out. 

178 35. White thorn was also among the spoils, being highly 
esteemed for its efficacy against witches. 

181. A Dialogue. Mr. R. Ramsay was organist of Trinity Col- 
lege, Cambridge, 1 628-1 634. P. The poem is translated from 
Hor. Od. Ill, ix. 

186. This poem, which for solemn beauty may remind one of 
Catullus (ci.), follows immediately upon one written after the death 
of his brother to Endymion Porter. This latter, in its obsequious 
tone, shows an ill side of the poet's character as the present shows a 
good one. It begins with a fine line, however: 

" Not all thy flushing suns are set, 
Herrick, as yet." 



166 NOTES. 

201. To Live Merrily and to Trust to Good Verses. This pleasant 
exercise in the classics I take to be a university poem, or it may be 
of London origin. The climax is noteworthy ; as genius wanes he 
needs more wine ; a health to Homer, a cup to Virgil, a goblet to 
Ovid, an "immensive cup" to Catullus, a tun to Propertius, and a 
flood to Tibullus. Here he pauses with a moral reflection. 

201 32. Bite the bays. Cf. Ill 8. The priests of Apollo ate bay- 
leaves to give them prophetic inspiration. The notion is carried 
over to the poets, as in Juvenal, Sat. vii, 18, 19 : 

" nectit quicunque canoris 
Eloquium vocale modis laurumque momordit." 

205. To Violets. The turn at the end is common to many of 
Herrick's amatory verses. 

208. To the Virgins. This poem may owe a part of its popu- 
larity to its having been early set to music by William Lawes. It is 
certainly one of the best known of Herrick's lyrics, though by no 
means the best, for there are not a few less known which are quite 
as exquisite. 

211. His Poetry his Pillar. This poem may be compared with a 
number of others (v. Introd., pp. xxvii, xxviii), and especially with The 
Pillar of Fame ( 1 1 3 1 ) . 

213. A Pastoral. This poem is a good illustration of the length 
to which poets of Herrick's time were willing to go for the sake of 
a compliment to royalty, and of how far the divinity that doth hedge 
a king could blind a clergyman to decency. This poem on the birth 
of Charles II. is of course a distinct adaptation of the events 
accompanying the birth of Christ. We have the shepherds and the 
star as in the Gospels, the simple shepherd's gifts as in the popular 
tradition and the miracle plays ; we even have the same line used in 
honor of Charles that Herrick elsewhere uses in honor of Christ (as 
pointed out by Mr. Pollard : "And all most sweet, yet all less sweet 
than he " ; found also in The New Year's Gift, N.N. 97 10). All the 
grace of the fancy and diction cannot render the poem pleasing to a 
modern mind, the feeling throughout is so intensely vulgar. 

213 20. A silver star. This was the compliment of the time : the 
star appeared again at the Restoration. Cf. Dryden, Astrcea Redux, 

288-291 : 

" That star that at your birth shone out so bright, 
It stain'd the duller sun's meridian light, 
Did once again its potent fires renew, 
Guiding our eyes to find and worship you." 



NOTES. 167 

216. A Meditation for his Mistress. The mood wherein these 
stanzas end is not uncommon. Sometimes Herrick meditates on 
his mistress' death, sometimes on his own : here on both, as at the 
end of The Changes, 252. 

218. Lyric for Legacies. Herrick loved to think of the circle of 
his friends, and loved also to think of the verses which he had 
written to celebrate his friendship for them. As he often prophesies 
immortality for himself (211, 366, 1131), so does he often promise it 
to his friends (445, 666, 806). Cf. 509, Upon Hi?nself: 

" Th'art hence removing, like a shepherd's tent, 
And walk thou must the way that others went : 
Fall thou must first, then rise to life with these 
Marked in thy book for faithful witnesses." 

223. It seems best to put the three chief fairy poems together, 
for they are obviously connected. Whether they were written at 
one time or not may be doubtful ; but they were undoubtedly written 
with thought of each other. It is possible that the Feast and the 
Palace were first written and the Temple afterward. In favor of this 
view it may be remarked that the versification of the Temple differs 
decidedly from that of the other two, that the Temple is dedicated, 
not to Shapcot for whom the two others were written, but to 
another, and that the Feast and the Palace refer to each other but 
not to the Temple, whereas the Temple does refer to the Feast. It 
may be that Herrick wrote the two secular poems before ordination, 
and afterwards turned his attention to the state of ecclesiastical 
matters among the fairies. But the matter is not important ; when- 
ever written, the three poems should be read together. 

Critics have busied themselves by looking about to see where 
Herrick got hints for these poems. Mr. Edmund Gosse mentions 
Jonson's Oberon, but Dr. Grosart shows that this must be an error. 
Grosart himself thinks of Drayton's Nymphidia, and Mr. Pollard 
concurs. It may be, of course, that Herrick gained inspiration from 
some especial source. But it must, I think, be allowed that this 
fanciful way of imagining the surroundings of Oberon and Mab was 
more or less of a poetic commonplace at just this time. We need 
not believe that Herrick borrowed his idea from Shakespeare, — 
so far as we can see, he was singularly uninfluenced by the great 
dramatist, — but certainly the fancies of Titania's orders (M. N. D., 
iii, 1) and of Mercutio's speech on Queen Mab {R. &> f., i, 4, 59 ff.) 
are distinctly of the same nature as those on which these fairy poems 



168 NOTES. 

are based. The difference is in treatment; with Shakespeare the 
idea is but a passing fancy, while Herrick develops it to its utmost. 

There is much lore about these poems which may be found in 
G., I, clix-clxv, and P., II, 306-311. In a little volume of a dozen 
pages, published in 1635, of which the only copy known is in the 
Bodleian, are two poems, A Description of the Kings (sic) of Fayries 
Clothes, brought to him on New-Yeares day in the morning, 1626, 
by his Queenes Chambermaids, and A Description of his Diet. Both 
may be found reprinted in P., II, Appendix II. The second is 
evidently a first draught of Oberorfs Feast, containing about two- 
thirds of the lines in slightly varying form and order. The other 
poem, which is in precisely the same manner, is conjectured by Mr. 
Pollard to have been written by Sir Simeon in answer to A New 
Year's Gift (319). Several questions are here raised. Mr. Pollard 
says of Herrick's Fairy poems : "All three were probably written 
in 1626 and cannot be dissociated from Drayton's Nymphidia, 
published in 1627, and Sir Simeon Steward's A Description of the 
King of Fayries Clothes " (P., II, 306). As above, however, I believe 
The Temple to have been written later. 

223 4. The halcyon'' s nest has been dear to the poets since Ovid 
(Afetam. x). It floated upon the waters while the kingfisher hatched 
out her brood, the fourteen days before the winter solstice. During 
these days the winds were quiet, for ^Eolus their king had been the 
father of Alcyone in mortal shape. 

223 9. House of Rimmon. II Kings v, 18. 

223 29. MaVs state, i.e., her chair of state. 

223 41. Favor your tongues. Favete Unguis, Horace, Od. Ill, i, 2. 

223 43. The procul este profani of the Aeneid, vi, 258, profane 
meaning merely the uninitiated. 

223 47. Odd, not even pairs. Perhaps because there's luck in odd 
numbers. "Numero deus impare gaudet." Virgil, Eel. viii, 75. 

223 51. This allusion (to the sacrifice of the mass) is one of those 
which strike a modern ear as blasphemous. The Holy Grist seems 
to be the sacred wafer. 

223 52. In mood and perfect tense. In perfect manner and time. 

223 59. Points. A point was a lace with a metal tag on the end 
used for fastening the clothes. 

223 117. Fasting spittle. The spittle of a fasting person was 
vulgarly held to be of exceptional value in charms and ceremonies. 
Probably Herrick had also in mind the use of saliva in some of the 
sacraments of the Roman Catholic Church. 



NOTES. 169 

223 131. The Lady of the Lobster. This is a coarse burlesque of 
such terms as Our Lady of Loretto. The lady of a lobster is a sort 
of calcareous substance in the stomach, which assists digestion. 

293. Oberori's Feast. There are two MS. copies of this poem. 
Mr. Pollard collates that in the British Museum (I, 295). The 
differences are very interesting as showing the care that Herrick 
took in perfecting his work. 

293 10. Grit is usually the coarser part of the meal. 

293 11. A r ice. Delicate, exquisite. 

293 15. To stir his spleen. The spleen was supposed to be the 
seat of different passions. The word is common, meaning melan- 
choly, or often risibility, which comes nearer the mark here. 

293 28. Cuckoo's spittle, " the white froth which encloses the larva 
of the cicada spumaria." G. 

293 33. Sag seems to be for sagging. The meaning is clearly 
heavy, but the form is out of the way. Cf. however, " came too lag 
to see him buried." Rich. Ill, ii, 1, 90. 

293 43. Mandrake 's ears. The root of the Mandragora was sup- 
posed to resemble a man and to have life. Popular tradition usually 
went no further than its vocal organs ; it cried out lamentably when 
torn from the ground. Cf. R. 6°/., iv, 3, 47. 

293 44. Slain stags. Such as served Jaques for his moralizing, As 
You Like It, ii, 1, 41. It was a common notion that the stag or 
hart wept when he received his death-wound. 

444. Oberon's Palace. There are three MS. versions of this 
poem which give not only a number of variants but also a passage 
of twenty-seven lines not in the Hesperides. It is in precisely the 
same humor as the rest, and may be found in P., I, 309. 

444 14. Carries hay irCs horn (foenum habet in cornu). Is dan- 
gerous. 

444 28. Lemster ore. The special riches of Leominster was wool. 

444 34. Wild digestion. Cf. wild civility. 83 12. The flowers 
are digested or arranged, but in a natural carelessness. 

444 36. Love's sampler. It is possible that the present generation 
do not remember that a sampler is a piece of worsted work. Cf. 
256 2. 

444 37. Citherea's ceston. Venus' girdle of beauty. 

444 57. Toadstones. It was the superstition of the day that the 
toad bore a precious stone in his head; cf. As You Like It, ii, 1, 14. 

444 60. A wart may be sold to any one who will give a penny for 
it. The warts pass from the hand of the seller to the buyer. These 
seem to have got stolen on the way. 



170 NOTES. 

444 82. Winds his errors up. Brings his wanderings to an end. 

225. Plaudit. The call for applause at the end of the play ; short 
for the imperative plaudite. 

250. The Hock Cart. Mildmay Fane, second Earl of West- 
moreland, was a patron of Herrick's, as appears from 112. It was 
customary throughout England to celebrate the gathering in of the 
harvest in various ways. The Hock cart was the last cart in from 
the fields. We find in Brand (II, 16-33) an account of the different 
customs which obtained in different parts of England. Our poem 
hardly needs any comment, so fresh and vivid is its picture of the 
festivity. 

250 2. Wine and oil is a little conventional as addressed to Eng- 
lish farm laborers. 

250 5. It may not be superfluous to caution American readers 
against trying to conceive of ears of Indian corn used in this man- 
ner. 

250 13. Swains and wenches. The former word became a very 
elegant term in the next century, the latter quite the reverse. 

250 34. Frumenty is made of wheat boiled in milk, with black 
currants in it. 

250 41. Wheaten hats were twisted from the straw. Cf. the rye- 
straw hats of the reapers in the masque in the Tempest, v, 1. 

256 2. Cf. 444 36. 

256 6. Hearse-cloth does not refer to a hearse as we use the word 
to-day. It means here simply the covering for a corpse or a coffin. 

256 21. Virgil's gnat. The Culex was then generally held to be 
by Virgil. Spenser translated it, and Herrick refers to it again 
(499 9). 

258. How Roses came Red. There are a number of other poems 
giving us Herrick's views on Evolution, as illustrated in his garden. 
He changed his views on Roses (cf. 708). 

262. To the Willow Tree. This poem is good comment on the 
expression "wearing the willow," the symbol of the deserted lover. 
Cf. Desdemona's song in Othello, iv, 3. 

267. To Anthea. This is one of the best known of Herrick's 
poems, but I do not think it can compare with 447, a poem of its 
own kind, or many others of different feeling (e.g., 316,89), which are 
by no means so famous. 

267 2. Protestant. The word is curiously used. But His Protes- 
tation to Perilla (154) gives us the probable meaning. He will live 
to assert his devotion to her, 



NOTES. 171 

269. Obedience in Subjects. This is one of the Sentences which 
express Herrick's loyalty. lie was neither the first vicar nor the 
last who held strongly to the divine right of kings. 

278. To his Household Gods. This is one of the poems which 
have given rise to the feeling that Herrick hated his life in the coun- 
try and always longed to be elsewhere. The most probable course 
of feeling on his part, entirely aside from any evidence but human 
nature in general, would be that at first, when fresh from London, 
he greatly missed his old surroundings, and found it hard to accus- 
tom himself to new ones. That then, after some years, he made 
himself at home and fairly contented with his lot. Toward the end 
of his holding his vicarage the old feeling of hatred of his surround- 
ings, coupled now with the monotony of years, might have made 
him once more discontented ; and with Herrick, who was decidedly 
a man of moods, it would not have been at all unnatural that now 
and then, even in happier times, he should have periods of discon- 
tent (v. p. xxx). In wholly different mood did he write His Content 
in the Country, 554. 

283. A Nuptial Song. This is the most elaborate and finest of 
the several Epithalamia that we have from Herrick. It was written 
in 1625 on the marriage of Sir Clipsby Crew, who seems afterward 
to have been a friend and patron of the poets. There are a number 
of poems to him in the Hesperides, as well as an epitaph upon his 
wife (980). 

283 6. The seven planets of the Ptolemaic system counted the 
sun and the moon, as in Paradise Lost, iii, 481-483. The addition 
here mentioned has hardly been so permanent as those of Herschel 
and Leverrier. 

283 16. Chafd air. The original reading is Chafte-Air. Mr. 
Morley reads chaste. It seems to me probable that the word chafd 
was suggested to Herrick by the mention of amber immediately be- 
fore. Cf. 375 16, " amber chafd between the hands." That the air, 
like amber, should give forth fumes of Paradise upon being chafed 
is rather a far-fetched idea, but not, I think, too remote for Herrick. 

283 25. The phoenix, when it felt that its time to die was at hand, 
made for itself a pyre of precious woods and gums, and so expired 
in a thick glory of incense. 

283 29. Bestroking fate. Influencing, compelling fate, for from 
the ashes was born the new Phoenix. For the noun stroke, with kin- 
dred meaning, cf. Holland's Livy (1600), p. 109 : "Appius was the 
man that bare the greatest stroke." 



172 NOTES. 

283 31. Hymen, O Hymen. The cry to the god of marriage. 
Cf. Catullus, 6i. 

283 32. Marjoram. The amaracus of the Romans, which was 
connected with the idea of Love. Catullus (6i 8) calls on Hymen 
to wreathe himself " floribus suave olentis amaraci." Cf. also 
Lttcretius, iv, 1 179. 

283 46. Wheat, like rice, is typical of fertility. 

283 54. Nice. Delicate, refined, and so in this case modest, retiring. 

283 84. Gloves, scarves, and laces were given at weddings. The 
bridegroom gave the points of his dress to be scrambled for, and the 
bride her laces. 

283 82. A sireti in a sphere. Cf. 577 52. 

299. Cf. 577 52, Farewell to Poetry, 17 (p. 133), and N.N. 121. 

299 2. Benedicite. The word is to be taken as an imperative 
with the meaning, " Bless you (or us) from murders." Cf. " Bless 
thee from whirlwinds." Lear, iii, 4, 60. On benedicite as an 
exclamation to protect oneself on the appearance of ghosts, evil 
spirits, see Kaufmann, Trentalle Sancti Gregorii, p. 55 (Erlanger Bei- 
trage, III). 

302. Upon Prudence Baldwin. She was his maid or housekeeper, 
and (perhaps owing to this prayer) recovered and lived a long time 
afterward in spite of the epitaph her master wrote for her (784). 

302 5. A cock was the proper vow to Aesculapius, when one 
had recovered from an illness. Cf. the Phaedo, 155. 

306. On Himself. Pilgrim seems to have been the general term, 
but Palmers, named from the palms they brought back, were prop- 
erly such only as had visited Jerusalem. Scallop's shell. The scal- 
lop was a sign that one had visited the shrine of St. James of Com- 
postella. Here as elsewhere we have an intimation that Herrick 
had his times when the Christian's life appeared to him as a Pil- 
grim's Progress. 

313. The Entertainment. A part of the wedding ceremony was 
formerly gone through at the church door. Cf. the wife of Bath in 
Chaucer's Prologue, 1. 640. The marriage, for which we have here 
the Porch Verse and the Goodnight, is recorded at Dean Prior as 
celebrated September 5, 1639. 

313 12. Fishlike. The fecundity of fishes did yeoman service to 
Herrick as source o'f simile or metaphor. Fishes were convenient 
as rhyming with wishes. Cf. 283 and 697. 

314 8. Ravish. Carry him away as the nymphs carried off 
Hylas. 



NOTES. 173 

319. A A r ew Year's Gift. It is not easy to say just what events 
may be referred to in the opening lines. No English navies were 
burned at sea during the time of Herrick's activity, and there were 
too many proceedings that might have been called closet plot or open 
vent, or outbreak. The expression late-spawned Tityries refers to 
the bands of riotous young men who paraded the streets of London 
at night, committing all manner of atrocities upon such unfortunates 
as happened to be abroad. They were the predecessors of the Mo- 
hocks of Queen Anne's day, the Hectors, and others of that ilk. 
Their name was properly the " Tityre tu's," being, for some strange 
reason, borrowed from Virgil's First Eclogue. It has usually been 
supposed that the origin of these bands was at a period later than 
the publication of the Hesperides. But Mr. Pollard quotes a poem 
in Micsarum Deliciae, entitled The Tytre-tues, by Mr. George Cham- 
bers, clearly written .in the time of Archbishop Abbot (ob. 1633). 
The Century Dictionary quotes John Taylor's Works, 1630. Mr. 
Pollard dates this poem circa 1627 (II, 306). We have no difficulty 
then in supposing that it is to the historical Tityre tu's that our 
poem refers. Unfortunately it does not throw any light on the 
reason for the name. 

319 6. It hardly needed an astrologer to see that the kingdom 
was a little under the weather. 

319 7. Wring the freeborn nosthril : the figure is from [w] ring- 
ing the nostrils of a bull ; Herrick may have intended the double 
meaning. 

319 14. Fox-i'-th' hole was a Christmas game. 

319 16. Shoe the mare (or the wild mare) was another. 

319 17. The custom has not yet passed away of hiding a pea and 
a bean in a Twelfth-night cake, of which the finders are hailed as 
queen and king. Cf. Twelfth Night, 1037. 

319 22. Dr. Grosart says that this kind of divination is more 
common on St. Agnes's Eve. 

319 23. Crackling Laurel. Cf. Tibullus, ii, 5, 81 : 

" Et succensa sacris crepitet bene laurea flammis, 
Omine quo felix et sacer annus erit." 

319 28. It is of course the consumer who becomes buxom and 
capers. From the spelling bucksome it may be that Herrick would 
have derived buxom from buck. The earlier meaning is obedient, 
but by Herrick's day it had got to the present meaning which the 
poet may have developed a little. 



174 NOTES. 

319 42. Liber Pater. The Latin deity of the fields and vineyards. 
But the name was commonly used as synonymous with Bacchus. 

319 47. Although we commonly think of the bagpipe as a dis- 
tinctly Scottish instrument, it is used in many other countries, and 
was common in England in Herrick's time. 

323. The Christian Militant. 2. To dead as a transitive verb 
occurs once or twice elsewhere in Herrick, and, although not used 
by Shakespeare, may be found in the works of other Elizabethans. 

323 4. Sedition would here seem to mean treachery, or perhaps 
disturbance. 

323 5. Thafs counter-proof, etc. Equally undisturbed by the evil 
chances of country or city. 

327 5. Balm. Ultimately the same word as balsam, and indeed 
both words are used at present with a very general meaning. 
Herrick alludes to a particular kind of balm, an oily resinous sub- 
stance which came to Europe from Syria and Arabia. Myrrh, the 
well-known perfume from the Arabian myrtle. Nard, short for 
spikenard, a somewhat traditional ointment of ancient times. The 
name is given to various modern productions, but Herrick probably 
had the old spikenard in mind. Concerning perfumes in Herrick's 
poetry, v. Introd., p. xxxiii. 

333. To Lar. In this poem, written we may suppose after Herrick 
had been dispossessed from his vicarage, he seems to bid farewell to 
the Household God with whom he had been at home so long. 

336. His age. John Wickes, or Weeks, to whom this poem is 
addressed, was a Royalist wit and a popular preacher. G. With 
the beginning compare the well-known " Eheu fugaces," Horace, 
Od. II, xiv, i-8. 

336 26. Mr. Pollard, always rich in such reference, calls attention 
also to Od. IV, vii, 14. 

336 28. Infernal Jove. Pluto, the ruler of the lower regions. 

336 34. See 327 5, note. 

336 48. The peculiar excellence of these lampreys came from 
their being fed on human flesh. 

336 52. Herrick probably had in mind the arched roofs of the 
great Gothic halls. The word therefore conveys the idea of great 
richness and magnificence. 

336 54. Baudery, smut. Herrick transfers the word from the 
moral to the material, or he may have used it without thought of 
the moral meaning. The older word bawdy meant dirty, probably 
unconnected with bawd. 



MOTES. 175 

336 68. Less circular. Less united. 

336 83. Baucis. The wife of Philemon. The visit of Jupiter and 
Mercury to the old couple is told by Ovid, Metam. iii, 631. 

336 89. Pussy s ear. Many people are now so dependent on the 
weather predictions of the Signal Service as to have forgotten that 
the cat's washing her face is a sign of change of weather, and so a 
calendar, though we should rather say almanac, nowadays. 

336 92. Gripings of the chine. The chine was properly the back- 
bone. These gripings may have been rheumatism. 

336 122. Wild apple. For the wassail-bowl. For a recipe, see 
1037. 

Mr. Pollard collates, and prints a portion of, a MS. version of this 
poem. It contains a good many variants and some additional verses, 
of which the last is perhaps worth reprinting : — 

" Then the next health to friends of mine 
In oysters and Burgundian wine, 

Hind, Goderiske, Smith, 
And Nansagge, sons of clune and pith, 

Such who know well 
To board the mighty bowl, and spill 
All mighty blood, and can do more 
Than Jove and Chaos them before." 

345. The Power in the People. Herrick's comment on Hampden 
and others of like convictions. 

359. To the Right Honorable Philip, Earl of Pembroke and Mont- 
gomery. Philip Herbert, Earl of Montgomery (1 584-1650), was the 
brother of William Herbert, the friend of Shakespeare, and succeeded 
him as Earl of Pembroke. These two were " the incomparable pair 
of brethren " to whom the First Folio, of Shakespeare was dedicated. 
Philip Herbert was rather a rough character, but in a measure a 
patron of literature. 

366. Upon Himself. " Non omnis moriar," Horace, Od. Ill, 
iv, 6. 

371. His Lachrimce. Evidently written in a gloomy time, when 
the old days in London seemed the only days of joy. 

375. To Mrs. Anne Soame. This is one of the most fragrant of 
all Herrick's poems ; v. Introd., p. xxxiv. 

375 9. Factors. The word commonly means a sort of steward, 
or agent. Hefrick uses it then in the sense of " doers." 

375 16. Amber, when warmed, becomes fragrant. 

375 23. Warden. A kind of pear. 



176 NOTES. 

386. A Vow to Mars. Herrick has six other poems almost ex- 
actly similar to Aesculapius (302), Apollo (303), Bacchus (304), Nep- 
tune (325), Venus (337), and Minerva (532). This one seems written 
merely with the desire to fill up the list, and with a recollection of 
the "relicta non bene parmula" of Horace (Od. II, ii, 10). 

393. Ear's Portion. This is one of the poems which give a no- 
tion of the worship of the gods of home, which was the subject of 
the frequent imagining of Herrick. Cf. 278, 324, 333. 

413. The Mad Maid's Song. No comment is needful to bring 
out the serene and pathetic beauty of this, one of the most perfect 
of Herrick's poems. 

439. Policy in Princes. This may well refer to Strafford, whose 
fall had an ill effect on the fortunes of his master. It is, however, by 
no means an idea original with Herrick. It was a commonplace 
which he picked up and turned into verse, as doubtless he did many 
another. Mr. Pollard has pointed out that we cannot infer much 
of Herrick's opinion from these distiches. See note on 25. 

447. To CEnone. " The brilliant simplicity and pointed grace of 
the three stanzas to CEnone recall the lyrists of the Restoration in 
their cleanlier and happier mood." Swinburne, in P., I, xiv. 

451. To Groves. This poem is extremely interesting, as giving 
us a hint of the Calendar of Saints in the poet's cult of the god of 
Love. The story of Phyllis, martyr and saint, 1. 23 (cf. Ovid, Heroides, 
Ep. ii, and To the Maids, 618 13), was very like that of Dido, and 
may be read also in Chaucer's Legend of Good Women, viii. The lot 
of Iphis, 1. 24, was happier. Born a woman, but changed by Isis to 
a man, (s)he was a witness rather of the power of love than its suf- 
fering. Cf. Ovid, Metam. bk. ix. The story of Iphis is not one of 
the best known, but I fancy it caught the fancy of Herrick through 
its connection with Isis. Cf. 197 11, note. 

475 8. Cock's first crow. All ghosts and fiends vanished at day- 
break. So the ghost in Hamlet and the Apparition, 577. 

478. The Wassail. " There was an ancient custom, which is yet 
retained in many places on New Year's Eve : young women went 
about with a Wassail Bowl of spiced ale, with some sort of verses 
that were sung by them as they went from door to door. ... It 
were unnecessary to add that they accepted little presents on the 
occasion from the houses at which they stopped to pay this annual 
congratulation." Brand, I, 1. The composition of the wassail "was 
ale, nutmeg, sugar, toast, and roasted crabs or apples." lb. 

488. Loss from the Least. Compare 704. 



NOTES. Ill 

499. Upon a Fly. 5. Took state. Was proud. 

499 9. Virgil's gnat. Cf. 256 21. 

499 11. Martial's bee. Cf. Epig., io, 32 (P.). 

499 15. Phil was Herrick's sparrow. Cf. 256. 

517. Bis Winding-sheet. Of all Herrick's more serious pieces 
this is the chief. But the absence of any Christian thought on im- 
mortality is certainly noteworthy. Even such thought as there is 
has hardly the genuineness of the rest. The last ten verses seem 
hardly of the same piece as the others. 

517 19. Cf. Job, hi, 17. 

517 27,29. The Star Chamber and the Court of Requests were 
abolished in 1641. 

517 46. The Platonic year is that wherein everything shall return 
to its original state. It is the year in which the cycles of the seven 
planets are fulfilled on the same day. Cf. Plato, Timceus, cap. 33. 

523. To Phillis. One compares, of course, with Marlowe's Pos- 
sionate Shepherd, which will possibly be preferred as more perfect 
in its self-restraint. Herrick makes no attempt to control the exu- 
berance of fancy which the country life calls up. 

523 26. Themilis is a pastoral name which I do not find else- 
where. Milton uses Thestilis in V Allegro, 88. 

523 30. The hayes was a winding country dance. Cf. Sir John 
Davies's description in his Orchestra, st. 53: 

" Of all their ways I love Meander's path, 
Which to the tunes of dying swans do daunce: 
Such winding sleights, such turns and tricks he hath, 
Such creeks, such wrenches, and such dalliaunce, 
That whether it be hap or heedless chaunce, 
In his indented course and wriggling play 
He seems to daunce a perfect hay." 

Cf. also id., st. 47. 

526. Upon her Eyes. 4. A baby there. Herrick has the figure 
of babies in the eyes many times. Cf. Pollard's note to 38. 6. In- 
telligence. A ruling spirit. 

527. Upon her Feet. The reader will probably award the palm 
to Sir John Suckling's better known 

" Her feet beneath her petticoat, 
Like little mice, stole in and out 
As if they feared the light." 



178 NOTES. 

532. A Vow to Minerva. 1. An art. The use is peculiar, and I 
find nothing to compare with it. 

541. To Julia. Cf. Introd., p. xxxvii. The last two lines may be 
compared with the poem on the birth of Prince Charles, 213. It would 
be rather hard for us to imagine a clergyman writing them (and the 
poem may be an early one) were it not for much more of the same 
sort in Renaissance literature. 

541 3. The inaradum is explained in the original edition as " a 
twig of pomegranate which the queen priest did use to wear on her 
head at sacrificing." 

547 2. One lip-leaven. That which leavens the lips, permeates 
the speech. These men are of the same ruling tendency of 
.thought. 

547 9. Prefer in the older sense, meaning to put forward. 

554. His Content in the Country. This poem is quite as genuine 
in feeling as those which express his loathing of Devonshire. The 
poems may have been written at widely distant times, but it may 
also be believed that at about the same time Herrick would have 
been sometimes in one mood, sometimes in another. 

577. The Apparition of his Mistress. Mr. Pollard (ii, 276) prints 
a collation of the text with that of the 1640 edition of Shakespeare's 
poems. Some of the variants are worth mention. For instance, 
that for Beaumont and Fletcher we have not unnaturally Shakespeare 
and Beaumont. In my study of the chronology of Herrick's poems 
I endeavored (Diss., pp. 37, 38) to show reasons for holding that 
this poem was not written after the death of Jonson, but that the 
allusion to Jonson in Elysium was jocularly complimentary. I had 
not at that time seen Mr. Pollard's collation which (1. 57) for " In 
which thy father Jonson now is placed " reads " shall be placed," 
which certainly seems as though Jonson had been alive at the time 
of writing. By the time of the publication in the Hesperides he was 
dead, and Herrick changed the wording. 

It is characteristic that Herrick thinks first of the delightful fra- 
grance of Elysium. Less characteristic are the spangles, tinseling, 
gilding, and enamel. This artificiality, which appears to us at pres- 
ent as rather bad taste, was common in Herrick's day, but Herrick 
himself was much freer of it than most of his contemporaries. 

577 30. The incantation of his tongue. Cf. "The holy incantation 
of a verse," 8 2. 

577 43. Sharp-fanged and snaky are far more appropriate epithets 
for Martial and Persius than is towering- for Lucan. Lucan was, 



NOTES. 179 

however, highly esteemed in Herrick's day. We may also compare 
Adonais, 404. 

577 52. In their spheres. The Ptolemaic astronomy conceived 
of the earth as surrounded by a number of spheres, — those of each 
planet, including the sun and moon, that of the fixed stars, and so on. 
Cf. Plato, Timceus, cap. n, and Milton, Paradise Lost, iii, 481-484. 

577 53. Evad7ie. The heroine in The Maid^s Tragedy, by Beau- 
mont and Fletcher. 

577 62. Cf. The Bellman, 299. 

618. To the Maids. 5. Draw-gloves. Brand (II, 416) quotes 
243 Draw-gloves, but gives no other description, nor do I find one 
elsewhere. Mr. Pollard's note is " talking on the fingers," Dr. Gro- 
sart's " a now unknown game," neither of which is of much help. 

618 12. Philomel and Phillis. These two unfortunates were favor- 
ite subjects of ancient and mediaeval story, — Philomel betrayed by 
Tereus, Phyllis by Demophon. Their stories may be found, to men- 
tion one of many places, in Chaucer's Legend of Good Women, where 
the excellent poet sympathises loudly with them. 

618 24. Bays and rosemary were used at weddings and sometimes 
gilded {Brand, II, 119). The posy was the inscription within the 
ring. The giving of gloves and laces (ribandings) to the guests 
at weddings was once as common as the present custom of giving 
cake. 

619. His own Epitaph. A bitttoned staff seems to be merely one 
with a knob to it. 

626. Poets. This distich should be learned by heart by every one 
who would know what manner of man was Herrick. It is probably 
as true of him as of Ovid (Tristia, ii, 353, 4). Cf. note on the last 
couplet in the Hesperides. 

636. To his Lovely Mistresses. One of the ceremonies which 
Herrick loved to imagine when his mind dwelt on his dreamy cult 
for the gods of Love and Death. The word reverend has been 
already used in this sense in speaking of " his religious father," 82. 

645. The Hag. This has a fine movement, but seems to need no 
comment. 

664. The Country Life. This is the finest of Herrick's Bucolics, 
except for its incomplete ending. It is very appropriately dedicated 
to Endymion Porter, who seems to have been a man generously dis- 
posed to poets and to literature in general. Herrick wrote to him 
various other poems not in his best vein, among. them An Eclogue or 
Pastoral between Endymion Porter and Lycidas Herrick (494), in 



180 NOTES. 

which the poet with oaten pipe endeavors to attract his patron from 
the court to the country, promising him the attentions of Jessamine, 
Florabel, and Drosomel, of Tityrus, Corydon, and Thyrsis. In this 
poem, however, a far more sincere note is struck. 

664 23. The best compost for the lands. Cf. 773, 8, and Hazlitt, 
English Proverbs, p. 369 (ed. 1869): "The foot of the owner is the 
best manure for his land." 

664 31. A present godlike power. This touch seems hardly nat- 
ural in Herrick. 

664 28. The kingdom's portion is the plow. The idea is not 
wholly obvious, but Herrick probably had in mind the thought of 
the plow as the support of the nation, as in the old poem Speed the 
Plough. 

664 38. Mummeries were maskings, usually at Christmas time. 
A party of merry-makers would go masked from house to house, a 
favorite representation being that of St. George and the Dragon. 

664 46. For sports, etc. Herrick has celebrated most of these 
events in the country calendar by special poems. On wakes, v. 763; 
on maypoles, 697 ; on harvest home, 250; on the wassail bowl, 478, 
789; on Twelfthtide kings and queens, 1037; Christmas revelings, 
786, 787. Quintal is here but another form of quintain. It con- 
sisted of a bar set up on a pole so that it could swing round. On 
one end was a mark, on the other hung a weighted bag. The game 
was to run at the mark, hit it, and escape before the bar had swung 
round and struck you in the back. The Morris dance was a favor- 
ite pastime, most common on Mayday. The name comes from the 
word Moorish, but the characters personated in the dance were not 
Moorish at all, being very commonly Robin Hood and his followers, 
cf. 763 8. 

664 54. Whitsun ale. Church ales were festivals in which the 
whole parish contributed to a brewing, the ale being on tap some- 
times even in the church. Whitsuntide was the favorite season, 
although not the only one. The practice had by Herrick's day given 
rise to great abuses, but it was not wholly done away with till much 
later. 

664 62. Nut-brown mirth and russet wit. The adjectives are sug- 
gested by nut-brown ale and russet gowns. 

697 12. Like to fishes. Cf. 313 12, note. 

704. Mean Things overcome Mighty. This reflection may well 
have been occasioned by the assassination of Buckingham by John 
Felton, August 23, 1628. Cf. 488. 



NOTES. 181 

714. Laxare Fibulam. Dr. Grosart subjoins to the word bash- 
fulness, "/.*., in greed to take more and still more." I should rather 
take the couplet to be a versifying of Herod, i, 8 : a/xa 8t klOCivl 
eKdvofitixp avveKdveTai /ecu rr\v al5Q yvvrj. 

726. His Grange. 6. As to Prue, cf. 302 and 784. 

726 25. To these. In addition to these. 

726 13. This special excellency of the goose is quite as likely to 
be due to a reminiscence of Rome as to a feeling for realism. 

726 26. Tracy was the name of his spaniel, for whom he wrote an 
epitaph, 969. It used to be said that Herrick had also a pig whom 
he taught to drink out of a tankard ; but if such were the case he 
seems to have considered the pig no fit subject for poetry. 

732. Charon and Philomel. Charon was the ferryman who bore 
the souls of the dead over the Styx. Philomel was the sister of 
Procne (cf. line 15) and the victim of Tereus. See the note to 618 12. 

753. Our own sins unseen. The idea, of course, is not original 
with Herrick. Cf. Phcedrus, iv, 10, for the fable of Jupiter's giving 
man two wallets, the one to be worn before, the other behind. 

763. The Wake. The wake was an annual church festival, held 
on the day of the saint for whom the church was named. 

763 8. Marian. Maid Marian was one of the characters of the 
Morris as well as Robin Hood, Little John, Friar Tuck, and Will 
Scarlet. So also (provided it were not forgotten) was the Hobby- 
horse. 

763 12. Base hi action. These barn-stormers were as badly off 
for costume as for art in their acting. 

763 17. Coxcomb. The object of cudgel-play (single-stick or back- 
swording) was to "break the head," — i.e., to cause the blood to flow. 

784. Upon Prue his Maid. This epitaph was only sportive, for 
Prudence lived on till 1678, long after the Hesperides was published. 

786. Ceremonies for Christmas. These poems are themselves so 
descriptive as to need no comment. 

787. Christmas Eve. 3. Flesh-hooks = hands. 

846. To his Book. There are one or two other poems in which 
Herrick trembles for the fate of his book. Cf. 962, 11 27. 

851. Satisfaction for sufferings. Herrick 's version of the well- 
known Forsan et haec olim meminisse juvabit. Aen. i, 203. 

853. To Mr. He7iry Lawes. The friend of Milton, who set the 
songs in Camus, and himself acted the part of the Attendant Spirit. 
Wilson, Gotire, cf. A Lyric to Mirth, 3. " Nicholas Lanier was ap- 
pointed Master of the King's Music, 1626." P. 



182 • NOTES. 

872. The Sacrifice. Cf. Introd., p. xxxvii. 

894. Candlemas day is February 2d ; the eve is the day or 
evening before. Another poem on the same subject is 982. 

894 7. It was a common superstition that the sun danced on 
Easter Day in joy of the Resurrection. Cf. Suckling, Ballad of a 
Wedding. 

" And oh, she dances such a way ! 
No sun upon an Easter Day 
Is half so fine a sight." 

Sir Thomas Brown, however, held that " we shall not, I hope, dis- 
parage the Resurrection of our Redeemer if we say that the sun doth 
not dance on Easter Day." Pseudodoxia Epidemica, bk. v, ch. 23, 

§ 14- 

895. The Ceremonies for Candlemas Day. 1. The Christmas 
brand. Cf. 786. 

912. Upon Ben fonson. Jonson was in the time of Herrick's 
stay in London the great poet of England. In his own day he had 
an inordinate reputation for scholarship, wit, and genius. 

913. An Ode for Him. The Snn, the Dog, the Triple Tun 
were taverns of which Jonson was a great frequenter. But the 
" Mermaid " and the " Apollo " are the two taverns especially con- 
nected with the name of Jonson. The " Mermaid " was the scene 
of the traditional wit combats with Shakespeare. It was for the 
"Apollo," however, that he seemed to have most affection, and for 
which he drew up the rules for the Tribe of Ben. 

913 17. That talent spend. Herrick had perhaps the parable of 
Matthew xxxv in mind ; there, however, there is no question of 
spending the talent. 

962. To his Book. Cf. 846, 11 27. Absyrtus was the brother of 
Medea. When she fled from her father with Jason, after the win- 
ning of the Golden Fleece, she took Absyrtus with them. On being 
closely pursued by the Colchians, she killed Absyrtus, and cutting 
his body to pieces she strewed them on the waves. Her angry 
father, on finding the fragments, returned to Colchis to give them 
burial, and the lovers escaped. 

1028. Saint Distaff's Day. Work began on the day following 
Twelfth Day, after the Christmas holidays. 

1030. His Tears to Thamesis. Richmond, Kingston, and Hamp- 
ton Court are all on the Thames, just above London, and now, as in 
Herrick's day, are favorite places of resort. 



NOTES. 183 

1037. Twelfth Night. Epiphany. For some other Twelfth-Night 
customs, v. Brand, I, 21. 

1131. The Pillar of Fame. The writing of poems in the actual 
shape of some object was one of the artificial elegancies of the time. 
Thus, A T .N. 268 is in the form of a cross. See lutrod., p. xxviii, note. 
With the poem, cf. Horace, Od. Ill, xxx. 

With the last couplet compare the distich Poets, 626, and Martial, 
1,5,8: 

" Lasciva est nobis pagina : vita proba est." 

His Farewell to Poetry. The poem has a number of difficult and 
doubtful passages, arising probably from its never having received 
final correction for the press. Some of these I pass unnoticed, 
there being no sufficient means for determining the true meaning or 
reading. In some cases I call attention to the difficulty, as in 1. 75. 
The whole poem is to be compared with those to Sack (128, 197) 
and The Apparition (577). 

2. Hatch 'd o'er with moonshine. To hatch is to overlay small and 
numerous bands on a ground of different material. 

17. Belbnan of the night. Cf. 299, 577 53, N.N. 121. 

21. Drinking to the odd nw?iber of nine. Nine is Mr. Pollard's 
emendation for the MS. wine. He refers to A Bacchanalian 
Verse (655): 

" Well, I can quaff, I see, 
To th' number five . 

Or nine," 

where the allusion is to the number of cups. 

22. Full with God. Filled with the poetic inspiration. Cf. infra, 
1. 42. 

27, 28. These two lines only are addressed to Sack. In the 
previous lines and those succeeding the subject is poetry. 

28. Fire-drakes. Here probably meteors, though the word also 
means will-o'-the-wisps. 

34. The general April. Probably the day of judgment, a day 
of smiles and tears. 

67. The minstrel. Orpheus, who succeeded in bringing his bride 
Eurydice out of Hades, but lost her just as they were reaching the 
upper air, by turning to look back at her. 

71. The Grecian orator was Demosthenes. 

75. Breasts of Rome. Dr. Grosart reads brooks, but neither read- 
ing seems to make sense. Not having access to the MS., I have 



184 NOTES. 

not attempted a conjectural reading. It seems, however, that beasts 
would be better than either. 

84. Numerous feet. The word numbers was later an elegant 
synonym for poetry. So Pope "lisped in numbers for the numbers 
came." Hoofy Helicon. The reference is, of course, to Pegasus, 
the winged horse of the muses. 



THE NOBLE NUMBERS. 

1. His Confession. In spite of Herrick's regret for the lines 
penned by his wanton wit, he printed them in the same volume with 
these more pious effusions. The Noble Numbers have, however, a 
separate title-page, and are dated 1647, a vear before the Hesperides. 
It is just possible that Herrick at first contemplated the publication 
of his religious poems only. They were in all probability the last 
written, and it has never been explained why they should have been 
the first printed. 

2. His Prayer for Absolution. My unbaptised rhymes. Whether 
he means the whole Hesperides, or merely poems written in London 
before taking orders, is hard to say. Here means in the Noble 
Ntwibers. 

41. His Litany. 13. Artless, in the obvious but little-used mean- 
ing, without art. 

41 21. The passing-bell was tolled as a person was dying. Brand, 
II, 202. 

47. A Thanksgiving. 4. Weather-proof cf. 336 52. As to Her- 
rick's humble fare, we have already referred to Horace : "Chicorea 
levesque malvae," Od. I, xxxi, 16. 

59. To his Saviour. It is this poem and An Ode (33) that led Mr. 
Gosse to write of the Noble Numbers: "He succeeds best where 
he permits himself to adorn a celestial theme with the picturesque 
detail of his secular poems ; he is happy if he be allowed to crown 
the infant Saviour with daffodils, or pin a rose into His stomacher." 
Ward's English Poets, II, 128. I should say, however, that 41, 47, 
77, 95 were superior to this poem ; they represent a vein of genuinely 
serious thought, to be found also in His Winding Sheet (517), and 
not a few other poems in the Hesperides. 



GLOSSARY. 



This Glossary has been made not so much to explain unfamiliar 
words occurring in the text * as to exhibit the peculiarities of 
Herrick's vocabulary. With this view, a good many words have 
been introduced which do not occur in the poems selected for this 
edition. On the other hand, there are a good many omissions in 
the present list as will be seen at once by comparing with Grosart's 
Glossarial Index. Matters of spelling are excluded for one thing, as 
baptime, bodies, bucksome. A good many words have been considered 
rather matter for an Index to the Notes than a Glossary, as ash- 
heaps, barley-break, blue-ruler, buttoned staff. A number of things 
seemed to belong rather to syntax, as for and, all and some. A num- 
ber more were rather matters of expression than of vocabulary, as 
abbey-lubbers, ale-dyed, blush-guiltiness. Some matters which belong 
more properly to grammar will be found in the Introduction, pp. 
lix, lx. Within these limits, however, it is hoped that the Glossary 
will be found, though not complete, at least of value. 

References are made by poem and line. 

Access, 1 5, admission, and so Ark, 274 6, basket. 

opportunity. 77 10, arrival. Armilet, 47 4. Apparently coined 

Aches, 336 87 (as a dissyllable). from the Latin diminutive ar- 

Admiredly, 821 6. There are milla. See p. lx. 

contemporary examples of this Aromatic, 375 14, 444 44. The 

word, but the form is very un- word is very rare as a noun. 

common. Artless, N.N., 41 13, without art. 

Adulce, 672 6, to sweeten. The Attent, 250 23, bent upon. 

common spelling is addulce. Auspice, 900 9. The singular, 

Affection, A T .N., 230 26, partiality. although uncommon, may be 

The word was obsolescent, even found even in the present cen- 

in Herrick's day. tury. 

Affrightment, N.N., 263 21, fright. Auspicate, 963 10, auspicious. 

1 The readers for the Century Dictionary have gone over Herrick very thoroughly. 
It contains a great number of those words which occur only in Herrick, and there 
are very few words in Herrick which it does not have. 



186 



GLOSSARY. 



Babyship, 213 26. See p. lx. 

Barbel, 336 46, a kind of fish. 

Batten, 554 13, to thrive, to get fat. 

Baudery, 336 54, smut. 

Benizon, 725 4, a blessing, bene- 
diction. 

Bents, 894 17, 223 95. The name 
bent-grass is given loosely to 
any stiff grass. 

Be-, compounds in. See p. lix. 

Be-strutted, 293 34. See to strut. 

Bishop, vb., 168 10. Dryden, Cym. 
and Iphig., 243, has an example 
as here, of " confirmed and 
bishoped." 

Blacks, 1130 6, black garments. 

Blaze, 283 160, to blazon. 

Blitheful, 657 1, 718 l, joyful. 

Blouze, 774 23, a cant term for 
beggar's wench. 

Boar-cats, 1124 9, he-cats. 

Brass, 106 24, money. 

Brave, 128 14, admirable, splen- 
did. 

BruckePd, 223 58, begrimed. 

Bucketings, 61 4, pouring water 
from buckets. 

Bulging, 1\% the staving in of a 
ship ; connected with bilge. 

Burl, 596 2, 108 10, to cleanse 
(especially cloth). 

Candid, 445 5, 900 6, white. So 
candidate, 817 2, and candor, 
3 1, N.N., 128 11. See white. 

Candle-baudery, 336 54, smut 
caused by candles. 

Carcanet, 34 2, 88 5, properly a 
necklace of jewels. 

Carouse, 336 127, to drink deeply. 

Cates, 106 109, dainties. 

Cense, 444 45, N.N., 97 6, 98 15, 
to burn incense. 

Cess, 100 3, assessment, here 
rather property. 



Ceston, 444 37. Cestus is the more 
common form. Herrick may 
have got this form from Ben 
Jonson. 

Chalcedony, 88 12, chalcedony, a 
beautiful quartz, milky in color, 
with opaque veins. 

Chit, 640 13, to sprout. 

Chives. In 223 133, the meaning 
seems to be shreds. It may be 
also in 333 6 and 676 4, though 
in these it seems more naturally 
to mean chive garlic, a potherb. 

Circum-, verbs compounded with. 
See p. lx. 

Circum stants, 197 85, bystanders. 

Cirque, 382 5. Here used for 
theatre. 

Cittern, 1038 6, a kind of guitar. 
More commonly spelt cithern. 

Civility, 83 ]2, polish, good-breed- 
ing. 

Cock-all, 223 59. The knuckle- 
bone, with which the boys 
played as at dice. 

Cocker, 106 26, 359 15, to pamper, 
to spoil. 

Cockrood, 664 66, a run for snar- 
ing woodcocks. 

Coddled, 283 61, boiled or stewed 
(not the word meaning pam- 
pered). 

Codlin, 223 61, an apple. 

Colewort, 106 113, a cabbage. 

Cotnmended, 293 53. To commend 
is to bring to the mind of ; 
" commend me to So and so." 
Here it is curiously used in the 
passive. In 618 35 it means to 
give. 

Compartiement, 654 8. The same 
word as compartment. Here it 
seems to be the pattern of the 
tooling on the cover. 

Complexion, 197 72, disposition. 



GLOSSARY. 



187 



Comply, 444 98, 577 40, to embrace. 

Comportment, 458 5, 949 1, man- 
ners. 

Consenting, vb. int., 106 32, ac- 
cording, agreeing with. 

Continent, 506 2, 742 3, that which 
contains. Used in 506 of a 
vase, in 742 of an apron or pet- 
ticoat. 

Convince, 197 7, p. 134 40, to over- 
power. 

Cornish, 223 20, cornice. 

Counterproof, 323 5, proof against. 

Coxcomb, 763 17, a slang term for 
the head, like mazzard, sconce, 
etc. 

Creeking, 726 10. Apparently the 
same word as creaking, al- 
though somewhat curiously 
used of the noise of a hen. 

Cunctation, 746 2, 922, delay. 

Currish, 86 11, like a cur, rude. 

Dandillion, 444 86. The connec- 
tion with lion is wholly obscured 
by the penultimate accent. 

Dardanutm, 88 8. See note. 

Dead, vb. tr., 120 2, 204 12, 323 2, 
788 4. The verb is now obso- 
lete, except intransitively in 
student's slang. 

Decurted, 900 8, cut off, abridged. 

Delicates, 106 110, now obsolete 
as a noun. 

Denounced, 128 47, proclaimed. 

Desigmnent, 926 1, design ; cf. af- 
frightment. 

Determine, 511 66, to come to an 
end. 

Dingthrift, 424 3, spendthrift. 

Disacquainted, N.N., 56 18, unac- 
quainted. The word, though 
rare, is to be found elsewhere. 

Discruciate, 701 2, to torture ; cf. 
excruciate. 



Disease, vb. tr., 1030 21, to dis- 
turb. 

Disgustful, 6 5, violently offen- 
sive. The word was not un- 
common. 

Disparhling, 444 29, sparkling 
round about. 

Disport, 1030 9, recreation. 

Disposeress, 718 12. Apparently 
coined. 

Distraction, 83 4, confusion. 

Divorcement, 197 2, divorce. 

Dollies, 111 4. A cant term- for 
sweethearts. 

Dolor, N.N., 154 2, pain, distress. 

Domineer, 894 6. The word is 
used without the bad sense 
now common. 

Dukeship, 266 1. The word is 
also found in contemporary 
writers. 

Effused, 82 8, 636 4, poured out. 

So effusion, 629 5. 
Enfriezed, 444 67, having a frieze; 

cf. 223 21. 
Enstyled, 444 92, called. 
Entertaimnent, 313, reception. 
Epithalamy, 271 8, 283, 900 12, 

N.N., 232 12, a wedding song. 
Err, 83 5, 336 63, N.N., 233 4, to 

wander. 
Errors, 444 83, wanderings. 
-ess, feminines in, see p. 73. 
Excathedrated, 168 4, judged ex 

cathedra. 
Excrutiate, N.N, 227 2, to torture ; 

cf. discruciate. 

Factor, 375 9. See note. 
Fantasy, 106 47, fancy. 
Farcing, 561 2, stuffing. 
Fardel, 753 2, a burden : the 

word was already going out 

of use. 



188 



GLOSSARY. 



Fat, 250 40, vat. 

Fetuous, 223 68, more properly 
featous, neat. 

Filleting, 22 6, 900 l, N.N., 83 42, 
a band tied about the head. 

Firstling, 36 3. For such dimin- 
utives, see p. lx. 

Flosculet, 318 7, diminutive from 
floscule, itself a diminutive. 

Fond, 732 10, foolish. 

Fondling, 23 5. There are con- 
temporary examples of this 
word in the sense of one fon- 
dled. 

Footpace, 223 132, a dais ; here 
rather a pedestal. 

Fore-, nouns in, see p. lx. 

Frippery, 223 21, worthless adorn- 
ment. 

Frolic, 913 10, sportive. 

Frumenty, 250 34, a country dish. 

Fuzz-ball, 293 29, a puff-pall. 

Gemus,l06 115, the guardian spirit. 
Gin, 283 70, 319 7, engine, trap. 
Glade, 664 66, an opening in the 

wood useful for snares. 
Glib, 467 5, glib tei7iptations ; 

smooth, as ice, and therefore 

here applied to something likely 

to make one fall. 
Gossamore, 444 95, gossamer, 
Grit, 293 10, the coarse part of 

the meal. 

Handsome, 238 13, 494 31. The 
17 th century use of the word 
was somewhat different from 
our own. Here the word is 
applied (238) to anger and (494) 
to hands. 

Handsel, N.N., 59 7, 90 2. The 
handsel was a first gift, as at 
New Year, or a first payment 
on making a bargain. 



Hearse, 82 15, tomb. 

Heave-offering, N.N., 258 4. See 
Exodus xxix, 27. 

Heyes, 523 30, a country dance. 

Hind, 664 13, a rustic. 

Hispid, 559 24, shaggy {hispidus). 

Holy-rood, 306 13, the Cross. 

Horrid, 323 14, more forcible than 
as used to-day, but not in the 
Latin sense. 

Huckson, 640 11, the hock, the 
lower part of the leg. 

Humor, 197 31, moisture, fluid. 

Hypostatical, N.N., 207 2, pertain- 
ing to a distinct person. 

Illustrious, 128 14, giving light. 

Ifnmensive, 201 25, 687 2. See 
pp. lxi, lxii. 

Inapostate, 1102 16, attentive. 

Inarculum, 541 3, "a twig of 
pomegranate which the queen 
priest did use to wear on her 
head at sacrificing." Note by 
Herrick. 

Incanonical, 1102 4. Not found 
elsewhere. 

Inconveniency, 700 2, inconven- 
ience. 

Incivility, 86 2, lack of civilized 
manners. 

Incuriotcs, 763 14. The word usu- 
ally means indifferent. Here it 
seems to mean that the vil- 
lagers were simple, or not 
curious in their tastes. 

Indignation, 871 2, un worthiness. 

Ingression, 654 2, entrance. 

Injeweled, 283 2, inlaid with jew- 
els. 

Inly, 128 46, inwardly, and so, se- 
cretly. 

Instant, 319 40, 546 22, present, 
current. 

Intelligence, 526 6, presiding spirit. 



GLOSSARY. 



189 



Inter, verbs compounded with, p. 

74- 
Intext, 654 6, text, contents. 

Jet, N.N., 123 66. To jet it, to 
strut, to assume a haughty car- 
riage. 

Jimket, 763 4. The word has a 
special meaning, but is here 
used in a general sense for del- 
icacy. 

Justments, 82 4, the things which 
are due : not noted elsewhere. 
Dr. Grosart derives it from 
L,a.t. justa, obsequies. 

Ken, N.N., 51 9, to recognize. 

The word seems to have been 

in current use in Herrick's day. 
Kingship, 213 43. Cf. babyship, 

etc., p. 73. 
Kitling, 106 124, 293 24, 336 146, 

444 74, a kitten. 

Lar, 106 106, the household de- 
ity. 

Larded, 106 111, run through with 
lard, as with certain richly 
cooked meats, and so, as here, 
luxurious. 

Lations, 133 4. Formed from 
Lat. latum, used as p.p. oifero. 
The meaning is hard to deter- 
mine. Perhaps bearings, in the 
sailor's sense, would come as 
near Herrick's idea as any- 
thing else. 

Laureate, 359 6. Rare as a verb. 

Lautitious, 785 3. Apparently 
coined from Lat. lautitia, splen- 
dor. 

-let, diminutives in, p. lx. 

-ling, diminutives in, p. lx. 

Lust, 128 12, energy. 

Lustre, 82 l, a period of five years. 



Manchet, 478 4, a small loaf of 
the finest white bread. 

Mantle-trees, 333 3, used here 
probably for mantelpiece. 

A/argent, 577 14, margin, border. 

Marmalet, 654 14, marmalade. 

Alatckin, 250 9, a sort of mop. 

Maundy 1070 1, a. basket, 

Maundy, N.A T ., 123 29. The mean- 
ing here seems to be alms re- 
ceived, probably on account of 
the dispensations on Maundy 
Thursday. 

Mel, 370 4, honey. 

-mctit, nouns in, p. lx. 

Miching, 726 24, sneaking, skulk- 
ing. 

Mickle, 444 6, 640 3, great, large. 

Napery, 283 68, table linen. 

Nard, 872 7, an aromatic unguent. 

Near, 478 27, stingy. 

Neat, 106 30, elaborately prepared. 

Neatherdess, 986 3, one of Her- 
rick's feminines. 

Nectarel, 54 4, for nectareal. 

Needihood, 640 16, neediness. 

Nervelets, 41 8, a diminutive, cf. 
p. lx. 

Novity, N.N., 244 2, newness. 

Nosthrills, 319 8. The form re- 
calls the etymology. 

Null, 508 14, to make void. 

Orient, 123 11, 178 22, eastern. 
Outduring, 1131 2, outlasting. 
Outred, 23 4, to surpass in redness. 

Paddock, N.N., 95 3, a frog or 

toad. 
Pannicles, 716 4, the membranes 

enclosing the cclla phantastica. 

Cf.pia mater in Shakespeare. 
Pap, 201 7, often meaning pulp, 

seems here to be used for sap. 



190 



GLOSSARY. 



Parley, 11 7, conference. 
Peccant, 270, 1064 8, offending. 
Peeps, 444 49, the pips on playing 

cards. 
Peltish, 444 17, angry, from pelt, 

anger. 
Perking, 130 7. To perk is to be 

jaunty or pert. 
Perplexity, 444 24, intricacy ; rarely 

found in just this use. 
Perpolite, 968 2, highly polished. 
Perspire, 644 9, to breathe through. 
Picks, 444 48, the diamonds on 

playing-cards. 
Piggin, N.N., 115 5, a small 

wooden vessel. 
Pill, 97 3, to rob, pillage. 
Pipkinet, N.N., 130 3, a little 

pipkin. 
Placket, 1028 7. The placket-hole 

is the opening in the side of a 

petticoat. 
Poetress, 265 10. The word occurs 

also in Spenser. 
Poise, N.N., 16 2, weight. 
Posset, 618 32, a mixture of hot 

milk and wine or ale. 
Prank, 250 20, 494 32. To prank 

it, N.AL, 123 67. Be pranked, 

523 44. To prank is to decorate. 
Precomposed, 839 3, made before- 
hand. 
Prefer, 547 9, to bring forward. 
Premonished, N.N., 43 5, warned 

beforehand. 
Prevaricate, 197 87, to swerve from. 
Prevent, 106 21, to come before, 

get ahead of. 
Prof user, 691 1, one who is pro- 
fuse, lavish. 
Progermination, 747 8, origin, 

birth. 
Propulsive, 450 l, propelling. The 

word does not commonly occur 

before the 19th century. 



Protestant, 267 2, see the note. 
Proto-7iotary, N.N., 72 2, chief 

notary. 
Purfling, 577 14 ; to purfle is to 

embroider on the edge. 
Purl, 494 4, to make a murmuring 

sound. Generally used of water, 

but here of the oaten-pipe. 
Purslane, N.N., 47 41, a potherb. 
Pushes, 596 l, pustules. 

Quarelets, 75 8, diminutive of 
quarry, a square or lozenge. 

Quick, vb., 128 5, to enliven, 
strengthen. 

Quick, 499 12, alive. 

Quickened, 78 6, given life. 

Quintal, 664 52, quintain, see the 
note. 

Rape, 106 126, capture. 

Rapt, N.N., 112 1, snatched, 

taken by force. 
Re-, verbs compounded with, see 

p. lx. 
Reavcd, N.N., 123 22, reft, taken 

by force. 
Redress, 1082 15, is more correct 

as a form than poetress. 
Redeem, 444 26, to regain. 
Regredience, 658 2, return. 
Reiterate, 1030 3, to walk over 

again. 
Religious, 14 8, 22 5, 82 2, 138 3, 

sacred. 
Remora, 35 4, a delaying sea- 
monster; see the note. 
Repulhdate, 336 23, to bud again. 

So repullulation, 796 4. 
RepU7-gation, 510 4, a clearing. 
Requesters, N.N., 30 3, petitioners. 
Resident, 521 4, remaining. 
Respasses, 375 20, raspberries. 
Retorted, 201 12, twisted back 

(from the forehead). 



GLOSSARY. 



191 



Ribbanding, 618 28, 986 26, an 
ornament of ribbons. 

Ruby let, 654 10, a coined diminu- 
tive. 

Ricsset, 664 60, of a reddish brown 
color, hence homely, rustic, 
country-made cloth being (or 
having been) of the russet color. 

Sack, 128, 197. In Herrick's time 
the name was given to almost 
any white wine, except Rhen- 
ish. 

Sag, 293 33, heavy. 

Saintship, 223 33, 498 3. See 
p. lx. 

Salvages, 86 12, 278 4, savages. 

Saturity, N.N., 138 2, repletion. 

Scarlets, 23 7, pieces of scarlet 
cloth. 

Sciography, 347 2, a picture. The 
N.L. sciagraphia is first re- 
marked, 1650. 

Securely, 106 35, safely. 

Shagged, 128 15, shaggy. 

Shepherdling, 2 12, 523 36. See 
p. lx. 

-ship, nouns in. See p. lx. 

Skills, 823 6, avails. 

Slit, 336 86, sleet. 

Slug-a-bed, 178 5. Cf. Romeo and 
Juliet, iv, 5, 2. 

Smallage, 82 9, the celery plant, 
especially when wild. 

Smirk, adj., 283 67, 377 72, smart, 
spruce. 

Smirk, vb., 504 3, smirking, 250 36. 
Exactly what idea Herrick had 
in mind in using this word with 
wine would be hard to say. He 
probably meant either that the 
wine made others cheerful, or 
that it looked so itself. 

Snugging, 78 3, snuggling. 

Souce, 640 7, pickle. 



Sparables, 650 2, nails used in 

cobbling. 
Spars, N.N., 47 5, beams. 
Spartaness, 142 8. See p. lx. 
Speed, 36 13, outcome. Generally 

of good fortune, but not so here. 
Sphering, 336 148, passing round 

about. 
Spiceries, 375 2, places where 

spices are kept. 
Spirt, 8 5, 106 60, apparently 

means to sptitter. In 106, one 

of the MSS. reads crackling. 
Starve, 81 12, 115 16, N.N., 83 70, 

to die (or make to die) of cold. 

In 293 14, it means to deprive 

of sustenance. 
Statist, 490, statesman. 
Still, 763 4, 923 2, always. 
Stomacher, 83 6, the lower part of 

the bodice in front. 
Storax, 577 8, a sweet-smelling 

gum. 
Strut, 672 21, to swell, to bulge 

out. 
Suppling, 377 51, tender. 
Supremest, 14 6, 327 2, 840 6, 1030 

1, last. 
Swerved, 81 10, wandered. 
Swinge?-, 1037 24, as we should 

say, a good one. 

Tardidation, N.N., 137 6, delay ; 
Lat. tardidatio. 

Teem, vb. tr., 257 5, to bring forth. 

Teend, 786 12, 788 2, 895 5, to 
kindle ; cf. tind, tinder. 

Tersely, 106 27, without extrava- 
gance. 

These-like, 197 84. Cf. such-like. 

Thronelet, 821 8, coined. See p. 
lx. 

Thyrse, Ills, 201 32, 336 135, 546 9, 
the staff symbolic of the wor- 
ship of Bacchus. 



192 



GLOSSARY. 



Tiffany, 283 8, a kind of thin silk. 

Tincture, 23 8, 193 32, color, tint. 

Tityries, 319 2, roisterers. See 
note. 

To, 223 97, in addition to. 

Tods, 769 l, bunches. 

Toning, 452 4, sound. 

Trammel-net, 664 65, 883 2, com- 
monly used of a kind of fishing- 
net, but not so here. 

Transpire, 375 17, 577 7, to ex- 
hale. 

Transshift, 1 9, 594 3, to inter- 
change. 

Tucker, 596 2, a fuller. 

Turbant, 223 138, a turban. 

Tyrant, 97 5, with the classical 
meaning of usurper. 



Volumed, 331 4, enrolled. 

Wantonness, 1 6, 83 2, sport, spor- 
tiveness. 

Warden, 375 23, a kind of pear. 

Watched, 111 73, 284 3, watchet, a 
pale blue. 

Weed, 306 2, garment. 

Whenas, 178 13, and passim, when, 
or sometimes whenever. 

Whipping-cheer, N.N., 265 8, chas- 
tisement. 

White, 77 11, 313 2, 336 40, 758 12, 
N.N.,YL§, auspicious, lucky. So 
whiter, 106 71, 547 8, N.N., 
128 9. 

Whitflaws, 444 59, a whitlow, 
felon. 



Un-, adjectives in, see p. lx. 
Unfled, N.N.,M 22, not mouldy (?) . 
Unsluice, 35 10, to open the flood- 
gates. 
Unsmooth, N.N., 137 4, rough. 
Unthrift, 274 17, a prodigal. 



Yerk, 377 21, 
noy. 



1052 l, to irk, an- 



Zonulet, 114 3, diminutive from 
zonule, which is itself a diminu- 
tive from zone. Ci.Jlosculet. 



INDEX TO FIRST LINES. 



This Index has been prepared to facilitate reference not only to 
this selection, but also to the editions of Grosart and Pollard. To 
the former, the references are by volume and page ; to the latter, 
and to this selection, the reference is by number. Each of the edi- 
tions named has its own index, but it seems convenient to have all 
three together. 



Number Vol. and 

in P. p. in G. 

89 A funeral stone . . I, 50 

499 A golden fly one show'd to 

me .... II, 140 

292 A little mushroom table 

spread . . . . II, 24 

(In this edition comes after 223.) 

323 A man prepar'd against all 

ills to come. . . II, 40 

8^ A sweet disorder in the 

dress I, 46 

223 A way enchas'd with glass 
and beads . . . I, 1 56 
444 After the feast, my Shap- 
cot, see ... II, 104 
1 125 After thy labor take thine 
ease .... Ill, 86 
913 Ah, Ben . . . Ill, 11 
191 Ah, cruel Love! must I en- 
dure I, 128 

14 Ah, my Perilla ! do'st thou 

grieve to see . . I, 14 

336 Ah, Posthumus ! our years 

hence fly . . . II, 47 

832 All has been plundered from 

me but my wit II, 286 



Number Vol. and 

in P. p. in G. 

N.N., 121 Along the dark and 

silent night . . Ill, 174 

856 Anthea, I am going hence 

II, 294 

1 14 As shows the air, when with 

a rainbow grac'd . I, 68 

619 As wearied Pilgrims, once 

possess'd . . II, 190 

582 Ask me why I send you 

here .... II, 177 

393 At my homely country seat 

11,83 

605 Be bold, my book, nor be 

abash'd, or fear II, 185 

JV.N., 230 Be those few hours, 

which I have yet to 

spend .... Ill, 206 

446 Besides us two, i' th' Temple 
here's not one . II, no 

267 Bid me to live, and I will 
live II, 6 

314 Blessings in abundance 
come II, 34 

280 Both you two have . II, n 



194 



INDEX TO FIRST LINES. 



Number Vol. and 

in P. p. in G. 

890 Bring the holy crust of 

bread Ill, 2 

704 By the weak 'st means things 
mighty are o'erthrown 

II, 230 

371 Call me no more . II, 67 
227 Charm me asleep, and melt 

me so I, 165 

732 Charon, O gentle Charon, 

let me woo thee II, 244 
53 Cherry ripe, ripe, ripe, I cry 

I> 33 

526 Clear are her eyes II, 153 

872 Come, and let's in solemn 

wise .... II, 299 

763 Come, Anthea, let us two 

II, 256 

786 Come, bring with a noise 

II, 270 

787 Come guard this night the 

Christmas-pie . II, 271 
618 Come, sit we under yonder 

tree .... II, 189 
250 Come, sons of summer, by 

whose toil . . . I, 175 
577 Come, then, and like two 

doves with silv'ry wings 

II, 173 

517 Come, thou, who art the 
wine and wit II, 146 

725 Command the roof, great 

Genius, and from thence 

II, 239 

86 Dean Bourn, farewell ; I 
never look to see . I, 48 
629 Dearest of thousands, now 
the time draws near 

II, 195 
486 Dew sat on Julia's hair 

II, 132 



Number Vol. and 

in P. p. in G. 

894 Down with the rosemary 

and bays . . . Ill, 4 

98 2 Down with the rosemary, 

and so . . . Ill, 38 

896 End now the white loaf and 
the pie .... Ill, 6 

316 Fair Daffodils, we weep to 

see II, 35 

469 Fair pledges of a fruitful 
tree .... II, 124 
1 131 Fame's pillar here at last 
we set ... Ill, 88 
128 Farewell, thou thing, time 
past so known, so dear . 
1,76 
70 First, April, she with mel- 
low showers . . I, 38 
no Fone says, those mighty 
whiskers he does wear 

1,66 
986 For a kiss or two, confess 

HI, 39 
851 For all our works a recom- 
pense is sure . II, 292 
327 For my embalming, Julia, 
do but this . . II, 42 
N.N., 2 For those, my unbaptised 
rhymes . . . Ill, 119 
391 Frolic virgins once these 

were II, 82 

299 From noise of scare-fires 
rest ye free . . .II, 28 

208 Gather ye rosebuds while 

ye may .... I, 144 
178 Get up, get up for shame; 

the blooming morn I, 1 16 
90 Give me that man that 

dares bestride . . I, 51 
607 Give want her welcome if 

she comes; we find II, 186 



INDEX TO FIRST LINES. 



195 



Number Vol. and 

in P. p. in G. 

478 Give way, give way, ye gates, 

and win ... II, 128 

123 Glide, gentle streams, and 

bear ..... I, 72 

548 Go I must ; when I am 

gone . . . . II, 162 

N.N, 59 Go, pretty child, and 

bear this flower III, 143 

1 1 27 Go thou forth, my book, 

though late . . Ill, 86 

N.N., 7 God, when He's angry 

here with any one, 

III, 121 
532 Goddess, I begin an art 

II, 155 
227 Goddess, I do love a girl 

n, 55 

218 Gold I've none, for use or 
show I, 153 

213 Good day, Mirtillo. Mirt. 

And to you no less I, 148 
413 Good morrow to the day so 

fair II, 89 

97 Good princes must be 
pray'd for ; for the bad 

_ 1,54 

214 Good speed, for I this day 

I, 150 

1032 Great cities seldom rest : if 

there be none . Ill, 57 

488 Great men by small means 

oft are overthrown 

• 11,133 

893 Hang up hooks and shears 
to scare .... Ill, 3 

603 He who has suffer'd ship- 
wreck fears to sail II, 184 
1 07 1 Help me, Julia, for to pray 

III, 70 
621 Her eyes the glowworm 

lend thee . . II, 191 
527 Her pretty feet . II, 153 



Number Vol. and 

in P. p. in G. 

N.N, 95 Here a little child I 

stand . . . Ill, 158 

452 Here a solemn feast we 

keep . . . . II, 113 

306 Here down my wearied 

limbs I'll lay . . II, 30 

554 Here, here I live II, 116 

912 Here lies Jonson with the 

rest .... Ill, 11 

310 Here lies, a pretty bud 11,32 

840 Here she lies, in bed of 

spice .... II, 289 

57 Here we are all by day; by 

night w' are hurl'd I, 35 

546 Here we securely live and 

eat II, 160 

475 Holy-rood, come forth and 
shield. . . . II, 126 
976 Holy waters hither bring 

III, 36 
706 How could Luke Smeaton 
wear a shoe or boot 

II, 230 

359 How dull and dead are 

books, that cannot show 

II, 62 

88 How rich and pleasing thou, 

my Julia, art . . I, 50 

653 I am holy while I stand 

II, 20S 

462 I am of all bereft II, 119 

[v. II, p. 263] I have beheld two 

lovers, in a nighf III, 101 

(In this edition, p. 133.) 

39 I have lost, and lately, these 

L27 

625 I make no haste to have 

my numbers read II, 193 

23 I saw a cherry weep, and 

why I, 19 

819 I saw a fly within a bead 

II, 280 



196 



INDEX TO FIRST LINES. 



Number Vol. and 

in P. p. in G. 

1030 I send, I send here my su- 

premest kiss . Ill, 56 

1 I sing of brooks, of blossoms, 

birds, and bowers I, 7 

N.N, 115 I would to God that 

mine old age might have 

III, 172 

225 If after rude and boist'rous 

seas I, 164 

22 If, dear Anthea, my hard 

fate it be ... I, 19 

962 If hap it must, that I must 

see thee lie . . Ill, 29 

1 104 If kings and kingdoms once 

distracted be . Ill, 81 

1 1 26 I '11 write no more of love; 

but now repent III, 86 

421 I'm sick of love; oh, let 

me lie .... II, 92 

58 In man, ambition is the 

common'st thing I, 35 
N.N, 33 In numbers, and but 
these few . . Ill, 128 
8 In sober mornings do not 
thou rehearse . . I, 1 1 
N.N., 41 In the hour of my dis- 
tress .... Ill, 132 
784 In this little urn is laid 

II, 268 
N.N, 228 Is this a fast to keep 

III, 204 
445 I've paid thee what I prom- 
ised .... II, no 
(In this edition, comes after 223.) 

59 Julia, if I chance to die 

1,35 

895 Kindle the Christmas brand, 
and then . . . Ill, 5 
1039 Know when to speak; for 
many times it brings 

III, 60 



Number Vol. and 

iu P. p. in G. 

50 Laid out for dead, let thy 

last kindness be . I, 32 
973 Let kings and rulers learn 

this line from me III, 34 
345 Let kings command and do 

the best they may II, 58 
891 Let the superstitious wife 

111,3 
186 Life of my life, take not so 

soon thy flight . 1,125 
194 Like to a bride come forth, 

my book, at last . I, 131 
523 Live, live with me, and thou 

shalt see . . . II, 150 
N.N., 1 Look how our foul days 

do exceed our fair 

III, 119 
90S Look in my book, and herein 

see Ill, 9 

jV.N, 47 Lord, thou hast given 

me a cell . . Ill, 135 
956 Lost to the world, lost to 

myself, alone . Ill, 26 
841 Love is a circle, and an end- 
less sphere . . II, 289 
29 Love is a circle, that doth 

restless move . . I, 21 

846 Make haste away, and let 

one be . . . II, 290 
709 Men are not born kings, but 

are men renown'd II, 231 
923 Men are suspicious, prone 

to discontent . Ill, 16 
325 Mighty Neptune, may it 

please . . . . II, 41 
206 Money thou ow'st me ; 

prithee fix a day . I, 144 

51 More discontents I never 

had I, 32 

188 Muchmore provides, and 
hoards up like an ant 

I, 127 



INDEX TO FIRST IINES. 



197 



Number Vol. and 

in P. p. in G. 

224 My Muse in meads has spent 

her many hours I, 163 

1 1 29 My wearied bark, O let it 

now be crown'd III, 87 

N.N., J 7 Night hath no wings to 
him that cannot sleep 

III, 149 

1076 No man so well a kingdom 

rules as he . . Ill, 71 

319 No news of navies burnt at 

seas II, 36 

547 Nor is my number full till 

I inscribe . . II, 162 

201 Now is the time for mirth 

1,138 

55 Now is the time when all 

the lights wax dim I, 34 

1037 Now, now the mirth comes 

III, 58 

969 Now thou art dead, no eye 

shall ever see . Ill, 33 

N.N., 83 O thou, the wonder of 

all days . . . Ill, 151 

598 O times most bad II, 183 

N.N., fin. Of all the good things 

whatso'er we do III, 224 
420 Of four teeth only Bridget 

was possess'd . II, 92 
959 Offer thy gift ; but first the 

law commands . Ill, 28 
436 Old Parson Beans hunts six 

days of the week II, 101 
636 One night i' th' year, my 

dearest beauties, come 

II, 200 
211 Only a little more . I, 146 
753 Other men's sins we ever 

bear in mind . II, 253 
549 Our mortal parts, may 

wrapp'd in cerecloths, lie 
II, 163 



Number Vol. and 

in P. p. in G. 

503 Parrat protests, 'tis he and 

only he . . . II, 141 

1 1 28 Part of the work remains, 

one part is past III, 87 

1028 Partly work and partly play 

in, 55 

929 Praise they that will times 

past, I joy to see III, iS 

N.N., 2 1 5 Predestination is the 

cause alone. . Ill, 202 

538 Preposterous is that gov- 
ernment and rude II, 157 

302 Prue, my dearest maid, is 

sick II, 29 

54 Put on your silks, and piece 
by piece . . . . I, 33 

525 Rare are thy cheeks, Su- 
sanna, which do show 

n, 153 

223 Rare temples thou hast 

seen, I know . . I, 156 

278 Rise, Household gods,' and 

let us go . . . . II, 10 

258 Roses at first were white 

II, 1 

490 Shame is a bad attendant 

to a state . . II, 133 
293 Shapcot ! to thee the fairy 

state II, 24 

(In this edition, comes after 223.) 
442 Shut not so soon ; the 

dull-ey'd night . II, 102 
247 So Good-luck came, and on 

my roof did light I, 174 
813 So look the mornings when 

the sun ... II, 278 
375 So smell those odors that 

do rise . . . . II, 69 
67 So smooth, so sweet, so 

silv'ry is thy voice I, 37 



198 



INDEX TO FIRST LINES. 



Number Vol. and 

in P. p. in G. 

197 So soft streams meet, so 

springs with gladder 

smiles . . . . I, 133 

(In this edition, comes after 128.) 

556 Some parts may perish, die 

thou canst not all II, 165 

360 Stately goddess, do thou 

please . . . . II, 63 

386 Store of courage to me 

grant II, 80 

1035 Studies themselves will lan- 
guish and decay III, 58 
664 Sweet country life, to such 
unknown . . II, 212 
255 Sweet western wind, whose 
luck it is . . . I, 179 



870 Take mine advice, and go 

not near ... II, 298 

883 Tell me what needs those 

rich deceits . . II, 303 

N.N., 102 Tell us, thou clear and 

heavenly tongue III, 165 

82 That for seven lustres I did 

never come . . . I, 45 

1069 That prince must govern 

with a gentle hand 

III, 68 

1 105 That prince who may do 

nothing but what's just 

III, 81 

439 That Princes may possess 

a surer seat . II, 101 

102 1 The bound, almost, now of 

my book I see III, 53 

269 The gods to kings .the 

judgment give to sway 

11,8 

645 The hag is astride II, 205 

697 The maypole is up II, 228 

586 The Saint's bell calls and, 

Julia, I must read II, 179 



Number Vol. and 

in P. p. in G. 

1 130 The work is done; young 
men and maidens set 

HI, 87 
387 These summer birds did 
with thy master stay 

II,8o 
262 Thou art to all lost love the 

best II, 3 

N.N, 53 Thou bidd'st me come 
away .... Ill, 140 
855 Thou hast made many 
houses for the dead 

II, 294 
541 Thou know'st, my Julia, 
that it is thy turn 

II, 158 
366 Thou shalt not all die ; for 
while Love's fire shines 
11,66 
876 Thou, thou that bear'st the 
sway .... II, 300 
726 Though clock. . II, 240 
324 Though I cannot give thee 
fires . . . . . II, 41 
47 Three lovely sisters work- 
ing were . . . . I, 31 
106 Thrice and above bless'd, 
my soul's half, art thou 

1,57 
477 Thus I . . . . II, 127 
N.N., 38 Time was upon III, 130 
716 'Tis not ev'ry day that I 

II, 234 
719 'Tis not the walls, or pur- 
ple that defends II, 257 
708 'Tis said, as Cupid danc'd 
among ... II, 231 
N.N., 221 To all our wounds 
here, whatsoe'er they be 
III, 203 
273 To cleanse his eyes, Tom 
Brock makes much ado 
11,9 



INDEX TO FIRST IINES. 



199 



Number Vol. and 

in P. p. in G. 

12 To get thine ends, lay bash- 
fulness aside . . I, 14 
714 To loose the button is no 
less .... II, 232 
32 To me my Julia lately sent 
I, 22 
251 To-morrow, Julia, I betimes 
must rise . . . I, 178 
853 Touch but thy lyre, my 
Harry, and I hear 

II, 293 
827 'Twas Caesar's saying: 
Kings no less conquerors 
are .... II, 284 
25 'Twixt kings and subjects 
there's this mighty odds 
I, 20 
849 Two things do make soci- 
ety to stand . II, 291 

579 Urles had the gout so, that 
he could not stand 

II, 177 

626 Wantons we are; and though 
our words be such 

II, 194 

788 Wash your hands, or else 

the fire ... II, 271 

789 Wassail the trees, that they 

may bear . . II, 271 
313 Welcome! but yet no en- 
trance till we bless II, 33 
205 Welcome, maids of honor 

I, 143 
yy Welcome, most welcome to 
our vows and us . I, 41 
985 Welcome to this, my Col- 
lege, and though late 

III, 39 
Vol. I, p. 1 Well may my book 

come forth like public 
day I, 5 



Number Vol. and 

in P. p. in G. 

334 What can I do in poetry 

11,46 

447 What Conscience, say, is it 

in thee . . . II, 1 11 

IV.JV., 96 What sweeter music 

can we bring . Ill, 159 

192 What was't that fell but 

now I, 128 

283 What's that we see from 
far ? the spring of day 

II, 12 

606 When I a verse shall make 

II, 185 

279 When I departed am, ring 

thou my knell . . II, n 

654 When I go hence, ye closet 

gods, I fear . II, 208 

610 When laws full power have 

to sway, we see II, 186 

N.N., 37 When once the sin has 

fully acted been III, 130 

35 When that day comes, 

whose evening says I'm 

gone I, 24 

781 Whenas in silks my Julia 
goes .... II, 267 
181 While, Lydia, I was lov'd 
of thee . . . . I, 120 
1 1 1 While the milder fates con- 
sent I, 66 

3 While thou didst keep thy 

candor undenTd . I, 10 

2 Whither, mad maiden, wilt 

thou roam ... I, 8 

288 Who forms a godhead out 

of gold or stone . II, 22 

696 Who, railing, drives the 

lazar from his door 

II, 228 

662 Who read'st this book that 

I have writ . . II, 21 1 

608 Who with a little cannot be 

content ... II, 186 



200 



INDEX TO FIRST LINES. 



Number Vol. and 

in P. p. in G. 

256 Why do not all fresh maids 

appear . . . . I, 180 

257 Why do ye weep, sweet 

babes? Can tears I, 181 

36 Why this flower is now 

call'd so ... I, 24 

367 Wrinkles no more are, or 

no less . . . . II, 66 



Number Vol. and 

in P. p. in G. 

274 Ye have been fresh and 
green II, 9 

443 Ye pretty huswives, would 
ye know ... II, 103 

451 Ye silent shades whose each 
tree here . . II, 112 

216 You are a Tulip, seen to- 
day I, 152 



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